The Bourne Stratagem
by jennamc
Summary: Treadstone changed him once. Marie changed him once again. The life of a trained assassin necessitates adaptability, and the only thing that never changes is change itself.
1. Ground Zero

_The Necessary Disclaimer: I don't own Jason Bourne or any of the precreated characters used in this and following chapters. Wish I did! But I don't. Thanks in advance for reading!_

* * *

Albert Hirsch's heart was racing into the dangerous triple digits. He had reason to be nervous. His life, his career, and his cause were crumbling right before him. He could still feel the cold, hollow barrel of the gun glaring right at his third eye. The hair on the back of his neck was called to attention while rivers of sweat trickled down from his temples. A dark-clad figure raced past him to follow the fleeing Bourne and the breeze left in his wake chilled Dr. Hirsch to a distinct awareness: a determined Jason with answers was far more dangerous than a confused Jason with questions ever was.

"I remember everything," Bourne had said.

Hirsch didn't want to explore the depths of that statement. Instinct told him he was done, but his mission extended further than himself. He was only one part of an extensive network and as his own power essentially went up in flames just outside the hospital walls, he had one goal- to pass the torch. It was all for a purpose far beyond himself, and that purpose would not fail. Not if he could help it.

He maneuvers his way out of the training room, brushing past the officers and medical staff that had suddenly flooded his hallowed floor. Waving off a question of assistance, he punches a code into the security box, turning the knob following an echoing click, and squeezing himself inside. The door falls heavily shut behind him and he takes a break to catch his breath and mentally regroup. The sound proof door thankfully eliminated the frantic shuffling and shouting from the hallway.

Pulse slowing with renewed purpose, Dr. Hirsch crosses to his desk, settling into his overstuffed chair with a weary grunt. His thick fingers fly to the keychain nestled into his deep pockets and he picks through them one by one, the metal jangling with his shaking hands. Adrenaline was coursing through his veins, but in his case adrenaline was the enemy. He worked far better in controlled circumstances and this was light-years away from being considered "controlled."

He finds the correct key and forces it into the old-fashioned lock in the bottom left drawer of his desk. Yanking the drawer open, he immediately hoists out a hefty rolodex, the small cards flapping until he finds the business card he's looking for. "World's Best Subs," the card boasts, with a generic sandwich icon embossed in metallic black.Still trembling, he picks up the telephone and waits to hear a dial tone, immediately punching in the number pressed into the card. Fingers fumbling, he's forced to waste precious seconds hanging up and redialing but finally the blissful jangling ring registers twice in his ear. A gruff male voice answers.

"Implement Attica procedures immediately. Authorization code Charlie Alpha two-two-nine," breathed Hirsch into the mouthpiece. "Pull and activate her. Blackbriar is burned. We can't let this get out of hand."

* * *

He held his breath until his lungs burned. The cold river water created waves of spasms deep within his core, making the task of remaining motionless near impossible. A quick mental calculation told him he had approximately twelve minutes to escape this freezing waterway before he was as good as dead, but before acting he first had to wait.

Taking advantage of the physical inaction, his brain sprung into engagement. His mind performed a brief body check. He knew he'd evaded the bullet, felt it whiz past the top of his head, but the fall itself into the winter water was far enough to cause any number of injuries. He wiggles his quickly numbing fingers and toes. An ankle was sore, as was the small of his back. His chest ached deeply, but due to circumstances it was difficult to determine whether it was a product of his current oxygen-deprived state or a sign of injury itself.

Ultimately, it didn't matter. The heat was being leeched rapidly from his body. He couldn't wait any longer and risk the most dangerous extremes of hypothermia. Twisting and turning, he finds the direction of the current and begins to swim. The physical action draws more and more oxygen from his blood, but supplies his muscles with movement related heat. It was only when the darkness in his view began to be produced by dying neurons instead of the murky water that Jason Bourne surfaced for a gasping breath of air.

"No," he thought calmly. He was no longer Jason Bourne. He was David Webb. But after a moment of staring back at the rooftop he'd plunged from, grasping for a plan of action, he realized that he still needed Bourne. Just for now.

He filled his lungs with a fresh supply of air and sank back down into the water. He could tell his muscles were beginning to fail and it was only a matter of time before he'd really be a sitting duck. Another hundred yards down the river and he turns to fight the current, veering toward the slippery banks. His mind on autopilot, conscious thought banished to background noise, he pries himself out of what was determined to become his liquid coffin. Nearby was a street and near that, a bank of stores. A sopping wet man would not blend with the rest of New York's nightlife, and this particular man could not remain wet much longer in the chill.

Jason propelled the body across the road way at a deceptively leisurely pace, eyes alternating between unfamiliar faces and store signs. The sensation in his extremities was failing and the fierce shivering he had come to experience was starting to fade. He was in trouble. Pressing his numb hands against his thighs, he slides past an oblivious mother and curious child into the heat and fluorescents of a third rate Laundromat. It was a shady locale, but shady is what worked for him best. Those with things to hide rarely bothered to ask questions. He paused, sizing up the inhabitants. The flushing warmth from the machines and heating system buy him the luxury of an extra bit of time to think. If he stayed here long enough, he would be able to dry his clothes and regain a viable body temperature, but he knew he didn't have that kind of time.

Motion caught his attention instantly and he watched as a flirty couple abandoned their tumbling clothes in favor of the illusive privacy of the ladies' room. A part of his mind registered their wedding rings and- coupled with their behavior- he reasoned they were either newlyweds or caught up in an extramarital affair. That knowledge was, for now, irrelevant except for the fact their lust gave him a momentary opportunity.

Pushing away from the wall, Bourne casually approaches their noisy dryer, alert for any signs of any undue attention. With cold, trembling hands, he yanks the dryer door open and roots around. An "XL" label catches his eye and he grabs for it, pulling out a pair of thin but large enough track pants. The wool braiding of a sweater is the next to call to him and he snatches that as well, flicking the dryer closed again to trigger it to return to its mechanical task.

Jason, himself, was just as mechanized as he weaves through the bank of washers s to retreat into the bathroom, pushing in through the door marked with the ambiguous silhouette of a man. Locked fast in a stall, he begins to shed the dripping set of clothing, draping them over the back of the toilet while he tugs on the pilfered set of replacements. The pants were a tad loose and the sweater too small. From the collar's cut he notes that the sweater must belong to the woman, but it was a dark and neutral color and he had no time to exchange it. His shoes and socks he had to keep, but emerging from the stall he drops the wet and useless wardrobe into the trashcan. He allows himself two pumps of the electric hand dryer to warm himself and make his footwear more habitable. Then he deems it time to move again.

Looking forward and moving swiftly, Bourne slips past the customers, noting the couple has yet to return. That was good. There was no chance they'd happen to question him wearing their clothes. He heads straight for the door, hand flicking out automatically to snatch a jacket from the coat rack. With a jingle of the door's bell, he exits the establishment and yanks the puffy generic brown jacket onto his still-chilled body. Its benefits were twofold: supplying extra insulation against the winter breeze and changing his shape to the view of outsiders. He looked shorter, stouter, and flicking the hood over top of his head he adopts a slightly more waddling gait. Within minutes, Jason Bourne disappears into the cityscape of New York City… exactly as he was taught.


	2. Bitty's

_Disclaimer: I don't own Pamela Landy or Jason Bourne. If you recognize the name, I didn't create them! Thanks again for reading though._

_A/N: Ahhh! Edited now for continuity mistakes. Thanks, TealMoon._

* * *

Back at the CIA's headquarters, it was mayhem- absolute mayhem. Pamela Landy was immediately swept from the Congressional meeting and deposited on a plane destined for Langley. Everywhere she looked were undercover agents, and it humored her in the slightest that perhaps they assumed she had another trick up her sleeves. She had nothing but she expected nothing less. She was well aware of the precarious position she had put herself in. In fact, she could have easily been taken out already. She could be investigating firsthand the contents of whatever afterlife existed rather than marching toward uncertainty. She couldn't decide which she'd honestly prefer. 

Her silent entourage pushed her through the airport terminal toward an awaiting car. All around her in this civilian terminal was evidence of her betrayal. The televisions blared nonstop television coverage, newspapers were already splashed with photographs of the top secret government officials she'd burned, and on occasion her ears picked up chatter from those watching or reading of the events. Some people were excited, some sounded deeply disappointed, and but in the voices of most was a deeply ingrained sense of worry. There was plenty of paranoia in her own internal conversation, after all. There could be agents in the car, ready to kill her. There could be a roadblock set up along the way to manufacture an accidental death. Weeks from now, her home could be destroyed in a fiery explosion with her inside. The threat of imminent death wasn't just for the immediate future. She knew any breath from this day forward could be her last. She had her brains, but that was only a circumstantial match for the brawn or resources of any number of the covert operatives she knew to exist.

There were agents waiting inside the car, however no threat seemed imminent. She could see their shape behind the darkly tinted glass. The door was opened and she climbed in as expected, quickly finding herself the filling in a silent agent sandwich. The air inside the car seemed still and stale, but it was probably her imagination and- more than that- it was more than likely inconsequential. The ride was long and wracked with tension. Suddenly realization set somewhere deep in the back of Pam's skull, dropping with the certain weight of doom. They'd taken a wrong turn. These people did not make simple directional mistakes, and they'd taken a wrong turn. Her body stiffened visibly and she spoke, her words cutting through the silence like a knife.

"Where are we going?"

The question was met with heavy silence. Only a single agent bothered to turn and look at her. Any answer would have been better than none and Pamela began scanning her surroundings. They were heading quickly into a rural setting, the tall city buildings shrinking as the minutes ticked by. Landy considered her chances should she try and escape the car. They were not very good. She could feel her heart pound in the back of her throat when suddenly the sleek vehicle came to a rough, abrupt stop. Pamela turned her head to peer out the window, seeing the front face of a small "mom and pop" restaurant, Bitty's. Classic red and white checkered cloth covered the windows from mid-pane down and for a moment she questioned the legitimacy of the place. It looked as though it was pulled straight from the set of some All-American movie. She expected to enter and be force-fed apple pie and sweet tea.

Allowed out of the vehicle, she felt as though she narrowly avoided death for the ninth time in less than a full day. She headed straight for the single entrance with the agents' eyes boring a hole between her shoulder blades. A tiny bell jangled to announce her arrival and she very nearly winced. Her assessment of the place wasn't too far off. Patriotic town memorabilia was tacked up to the walls, including an advertisement for a pie-eating contest that occurred a week ago. It all seemed too generic, too good to be true. Willing her feet forward, she approached the counter to be seated but her party was evidently already waiting. A hand shot out above the top of a booth to catch her attention and she waves off the hostess's question in favor of seating herself.

Pamela felt her blood pressure lower as she moved to slide into the vinyl covered seat across from the man. He was older like most of her other superiors. His hair was gray, a pair of bifocals perched on the bridge of his nose. His state of dress was shockingly casual, just a pair of jeans and a tacky flannel shirt. Landy had to admit he fit in far more than she did in her blouse and suit pants. While the man she now faced had the physical profile of those that ran the agency, she couldn't quite place his face with a name. That simple fact irritated her on a base level. The situation was quickly remedied by an introduction.

"Sorry about all that cloak and dagger bullshit.I hate it, but… necessity. I'm sure you understand," the man muttered with a vague air of disdain. "Greg Toro. Gregory, really, but I hate that too."

Pamela Landy had come to expect the unexpected, but this man was so far from left field she found it hard to accept at face value. She was no fool and with her image flashing across CNN's broadcast just anyone could have flagged her down and made the correct assumptions. "Credentials, please," she quietly insisted.

Shrugging, Toro fished inside the pocket of his shirt and dug out a small leather portfolio which he passed along to Landy. After a more than cursory examination, she returned it, satisfied with its legitimacy.

"Department Director? Just which department do you direct, sir?"

"I'm Kramer's replacement, Landy," Toro stated simply while reaching to take a sip of his coffee. The beneficent hometown boy act had faded to a whisper but Pam could tell it was still there, just waiting to surface again. "You realize just how deep you're in it. I'm sure you also realize there's no way we can fire you nor can we keep you in any official capacity. We can't afford publicity either way."

Pam was painfully aware of this paradoxical position. If she were fired or killed it would be an agency-wide admission of guilt. If she were kept on board, every mission and task she was assigned would be under brutal scrutiny. The CIA was trying to calmly wash its hands of the Blackbriar debacle with as little recognition as possible. Just like its agents, the entity itself worked best under the radar and out of the media. Landy's actions were an act of betrayal but for now the public outrage would keep her safe. Her career was in ruins- that was for sure, but what she'd be left with was still an object of uncertainty.

"Well? Landy, we've got a handful of higher powers up for federal offenses, potentially a dozen trained assassins walking aimlessly on the streets, and then there's you." Toro was clearly waiting for some kind of suggestion or reply but Pamela was coming up with nothing. She couldn't argue with facts. She simply maintained her careful silence until she's saved from immediate answer by an intruding waitress in search of her order.

"Just a coffee, please," Landy intoned. However, after being met with an incredulous stare by both the employee and Gregory, she made an addendum. "And a small stack of pancakes… plain." After watching the mousey teenager scuttle off to place the order, Pamela returned her gaze to Toro.

"Honestly, I'm not sure what I'm expected to say here. I did what I felt was right. Vosen and Kramer were blatantly abusing the power given to them by the government and the people. They were taking out American citizens- the same people that gave them the power in the first place," Landy said, voice soft but steady. She felt the distinct compulsion to fiddle with her silverware bundle but thoughtfully resisted. "That's not the agency I joined and that's not the kind of convoluted politics I can support. There are rules and processes in place for a reason: so that innocent people don't die for crimes they don't commit.

"I realize I acted out of place sending classified documents into open circulation. I also realize now as I realized at the time there will be boundless consequences coming my way. However, I was working blind. I didn't know how deep or how far the corruption ran and I wasn't going to risk allowing someone to hit the target on my back before I could end the cycle of abuse." Pamela Landy had been working on that speech since she hit the "send" button in the fax machine. She didn't think she'd get a chance to recite it and considering the circumstances she'd abridged and shortened it. It was her pitch- whether for her life or her job she wasn't sure.

It was now Toro's turn for silence. His steely blue eyes peered out from behind the metal rims of his glasses, drilling into her brain. Landy, for all it was worth, returned the gaze with a façade of calm. For what seemed like a decade, they were caught in a grade school staring contest- both of them formidable opponents in the game of intimidation. It was Toro that looked away first, off toward the waitress who was delivering Pam's food. The waitress quickly slunk away after noting the tension. She didn't bet on receiving much of a tip.

"You're not going to set foot in Langley or any other CIA hub again, Pam. If you're seen, you're to be shot on site," the director's voice was low but serene as though reciting an old children's fable. "You work for your life now. You made a mess- a huge mess- and it's going to take a lot of doing to clean up. Guess what… you get to carry the mop." Toro let that sink in while Landy sat at attention, sipping his coffee simply to make her wait. "You remember those agents I mentioned earlier? The ones you left without a commander? You're going to find them. You will find them and you will report directly to me. I'll handle it from there."

"And how are you going to handle it?" Landy asked. The question was necessary following Vosen's reign. She'd been a firsthand witness to his willingness to hand out death sentences. He had free reign. Despite the media attention, Landy had no illusions that Toro's power didn't extend at least as far. After escaping and exposing a corrupt system, there was no way she could allow herself to leap onto the bandwagon of another. If it meant death, so be it. This time, her hands would remain clean.

"Are you asking if I'm going to kill them?" Toro questioned, a single brow raised. Landy didn't need to respond in order to get an answer. "No, I will not be killing them. But they are dangerous and need to be contained. They're trained to deal out death, Pamela. If their training breaks and they come after us, we're all going to be dead. There is so much crammed into their overworked brains they could snap at any moment. You saw the damage Jason Bourne alone could do. Now imagine ten of him, all focused on a single target: us."

"You want Bourne. Nicky too." Pam's mind was completely focused now. In the context of the conversation, her words should have formed a question but they didn't. She already knew the answer.

"Them too. All you have to do is locate them. Hell, Pam, that's all you're going to have the clearance to do. You flag passports, you check newspapers. You're the eyes of this operation. You don't get to speak, because frankly, you're in no position to possess an opinion. This is busy work. You report everything you find to me." Toro polished off his coffee. He knew he had her hooked, and he wasn't afraid to let the triumph show. "If you need leg work- echelon monitoring, questions for foreign embassies or officials... anything that involves high security clearance or opening your mouth, I've got that covered. Forget Tom. You have a new assistant. His name is Martin Rike, and he is your new best friend."


	3. 229

_Disclaimer: Landy, Bourne, and Nicky aren't mine! _

_Thanks to everyone who's read so far and special thanks to those who've dropped a review. I know this is moving somewhat slowly, but I'm in it for the long haul. I promise, I'm almost done with all of this exposition!_

* * *

It was a cool night in New York and the air was dry and still. Clouds loomed off along the horizon, illuminated by the waning light of the moon but they were light and wispy, offering no threat of rain. All was quiet on the college campus, save for the occasional clumping of uniform boots along the walkways or through the halls. It was a noise Morena Brandt was accustomed to. After two years, she could generally tell the time from the number of passes made. It was silent now, however, except within the deep recesses of her mind- those dark and half hidden areas were never silent, not even when she slept. Tonight, sleep was not coming easily. Something felt wrong, but it was intangible and absolutely elusive to all reason. Sighing softly, she turned and adjusted her pillow, the scratchy noise of the shifting sheets creating a brief orchestra with the rhythmic sound of one of her roommates snoring.

A peek at her alarm told her it was just after one o'clock in the morning. The digital numbers blazed a taunting red. The device would loudly and most obnoxiously alert her to the fact it was time to rise in less than four hours, an almost disillusioning realization. Sleep had to come. Sleep would come, eventually, just like it always did. Morena closed her eyes and took a deep breath, forcing her brain to focus on the reassuring noises. The snoring, the far off thump of boot heels, her own steady breathing and even the sensation of her pulse in her thumbs and temples.

In fact, she believed the rudimentary relaxation technique worked when she heard the shuffle of feet out in the hallway again. They shouldn't have come again until around three. Immediately her brows furrowed in distracted concentration. She willed her eyes to remain shut for fear of having to start the meditative process all over again but it was useless. The vague suspicion of wrong sprung from the corners of her mind and shot straight into conscious thought. Morena didn't have to wait long for her concerns to be cemented. The footsteps slowed and then stopped right at her door. Anticipating what came next, Brandt flipped off her blanket and sat up, sliding her feet into well-worn slippers and weaving around the beds of her slumbering peers.

The knocking came just as she was approaching the door. It was quiet, but distinct and sharp. She lifted her chin slightly and peeked through the peephole, sizing up the two figures planted outside of her dorm room. One she recognized- Charles Ansling, a fourth year student, First Captain. She'd never spoken to him directly, never had a class with him, but knew his name and face. They were both active on the track team, but she was on the women's team and he was on the men's. Their interaction was limited.

Despite the lack of familiarity, Morena could tell he'd been wrangled from the grips of an exhausted sleep- his eyes were slightly reddened, his posture just short of perfection, and he'd missed a button on his uniform. He was also clearly none too pleased about being awake. The man to his right was completely foreign to her, though. He wasn't dressed in West Point uniform. He was dressed in the generic corporate uniform of a black suit and white shirt, his hair shorn as short as Ansling's but about two shades darker. She judged him to be in his late thirties and more rough around the edges than his polished appearance would suggest. The bridge of his nose had just the slightest deviation, the sign of a corrected and long-healed fracture. As First Captain Ansling's hand lifted for another series of knocks, Morena abruptly swung the door open, causing the weary cadet to halt in mid-motion to avoid rapping a rhythm right between her eyes. The momentarily flash of surprise that flickered across his face would soon be but a small concession.

"Sir?" Brandt's eyes shifted between the two solemn faces. The pit of her stomach stirred in dread anticipation. While it was perhaps just her imagination, she thought she could feel the adrenaline in her body gear up to flood her bloodstream. No one had come knocking on her door before four in the morning since her first week at the academy and in all her time there no one- not a single soul- outside of the academy itself was allowed into the dormitories past dark.

"Come with us, please," intoned the nameless man in black. Morena had to fight the impulse to demand his name and business but the seemingly heavy nature of their meeting did not invite questions. Instead, she simply looked over to Ansling for confirmation.

"Lieutenant General Hagenbeck needs to see you," the First Captain stated quietly. It was a distressingly somber volume, a weighted kind of emptiness within that Brandt couldn't dismiss as a symptom of the hour. The fact that the school's Superintendent wished her presence before two in the morning drove the seriousness of the situation in hard. For a long moment, Morena was speechless. She quickly noted that there was nothing she neither should nor could say and she wordlessly stepped from within the relatively safe confines of her room into the blaring light of the hallway.

Sometimes she hated to be right.

* * *

After years of existing in the sterile organization of her office, it was nothing short of odd for Pamela Landy to watch her living room be transformed into a makeshift work station. Movers had spent nearly an hour loading in and setting up computers, telephones, and boxes, clueless to exactly how they'd all be used. Her introduction to her new assistant Martin Rike was brief and extremely formal. He was young, tall, and thin with black hair that was already receding past his temples. Already, Landy had learned he had a tendency for brooding silence unless directly questioned as though he assumed ever musing was rhetorical. He had a near robotic incapability to engage in simple conversation which made getting used to his statuesque presence a daunting task.

The gaps in conversation and engagement left Pam with plenty of time to think, however. The task served to her seemed completely impossible, and she was certain Toro knew that. That was precisely why she was given this assignment- so it would take long enough time to fall flat on her face and fail for the media to back off, Congress to come to its resolutions, and guilty parties to be jailed. Then, without the attention and limelight, she would be quietly disposed of. On one level that compelled her to give up. If she was going to fail, she would do so spectacularly. It was petty bitterness that gnawed at her to pursue that path and she knew it, so while she would entertain the idea she would never invite it to move in. She was cursed, after all, with an undeniable sense of justice.

When the movers had finally filed out her front door, Pam lowered herself into her new office chair with a tired sigh. Martin was there, of course, sitting in the corner as a sentry stationed to oversee the operation. "Do you know what they're giving me to work with?" she asked, grabbing the nearest box to open and peruse through. She received no answer. In the box was a collection of relatively slim files. Plucking one from the stack, she inspected the computer-typed label affixed to the tab. "Potter…" she read, flipping it open and scanning the provided information. It was only the bare minimum Toro felt she needed: a color photo with several appearance-altered insets and two sheets of paper detailing all of his issued passports and aliases, cell phone numbers, known contacts, the languages he was fluent or proficient in, and finally every location he had ever worked at or visited. There were eleven files in all, and nothing on Jason Bourne or Nicolette Parsons. Apparently Toro assumed she knew enough about them to fail in a believable fashion.

After booting up her computer and searching through the available applications. She found she could track passports for all major modes of transportation and track cell phone signals but nothing more than that. Feeling a headache creep up on her as a product of abject frustration, Pam turned to regard Martin with raised brows. "This may be hard for you, but I'm going to need you to do a lot of speaking."


	4. Carousel

_Disclaimer: Nicky Parsons isn't mine. Neither are any of the established Bourne trilogy characters mentioned in previous or following chapters._

_A/N: I'm almost sure this is going to be the last chapter for at least a couple of days. I've got everyone introduced that I needed introduced, and I'm starting to get things going. Entropy! Hope you enjoy._

* * *

Morena was certain the ride from West Point to her small suburban home lasted forever. According to her watch it took just over two hours but according to her inner clock it had to have taken at least seven years. She felt nearly a decade older. For once in a long time, her physical appearance echoed the way she was feeling. Without the anonymous protection of her uniform, she was exposed to the world. Her hair hung to her shoulders, limp and dull. Two years of ponytails and twisted buns left her chestnut locks conditioned into a specific wave pattern that just looked odd when left down- sad. She peered at her townhouse through heavy lashes, prying her two meager duffle bags from the half-brown lawn long after the cab had pulled away. She was swept up in a whirlwind sensation of absolute disbelief that kept her in her place. Her brain was caught in a continuous loop even as she carefully walked up the pathway and inserted her key into the door.

"We've discovered some very serious discrepancies in your record, Brandt," the Superintendent had said. "I've received an anonymous tip that the information you submitted on your application and every document there after is fraudulent. You applied to this school and service under the alias 'Morena Brandt.' That is not your correct name, is it? Your social security number is also falsified." She had stood there, stunned, banked on each side by a somber official. For a long time no one spoke. They were all waiting for a teary-eyed confession that wouldn't come.

"I'm sorry sir, I don't think I follow. I showed all of the appropriate identification upon entering. That's my name, my number. I was even fingerprinted," Brandt couldn't conjure up any other argument than that. She couldn't even think of how such a con could have been perpetrated in the first place. How one would even accomplish a complicated and deceptive feat like that boggled her mind. She questioned that fact and questioned her motive for lying but in the end her questions were no match for the evidence stacked against her- another name, another social security number, another birth certificate, and a set of prints to tie it all up in a neat little package. Her spotless academic record, perfect attendance and exceptional physical performance instantly meant nothing at all.

She was dismissed at once. Accompanied by the same guards, Morena had only thirty minutes to pack and evacuate the premises. She'd thrown her few belongings into bags and met a cab outside of the campus walls. At the perimeter of conscious thought, she was very much aware of the significance of her dismissal. Her life completely changed at two o'clock in the morning. It wasn't even daylight now and her whole existence was different. She had no plan and no purpose, no direction in which to steer herself. She'd in fact barely escaped imprisonment. Disturbingly, she had a hunch that had to do with the nature of the Superintendent's informant. Absolutely none of it sat well with Brandt. It was ridiculous. It was heartbreaking. It was wrong.

Something else was wrong, however- something that was far more immediate than the endless cycle of incredulity her brain was trapped in. As soon as she opened her front door she noticed it. It had been over two years since she'd been home and before that she'd only considered the place home for a few months. She didn't ever have the time to become as intimately familiar with the sights and sounds of her house as she had been familiar with her dorm but still the filament-thin hairs on the back of her neck were standing at attention. Feigning leisure, Morena continued into the building, twisting the knob in order to slide the door back into place without the telltale click.

Setting her bags down in the hallway, her fingers slid to grab the empty change bowl from the table beside the door. Its heft felt comfortable in her hand and she began to circle from room to room, abruptly opening doors and looking inside for… what? She didn't know. The first floor was clear but halfway up the stairs on her way to check her bedroom and bathroom, she stopped. She smelled something and it took half a second to place the scent. It was gas, nearly odorless, but it was there in the air. It tickled the back of her throat, made her feel as though she had to take an extra breath. Then came the boost of adrenaline. Her feet boosted her up the steps two by two, her shoulder plowing into the door of her bedroom while she turned the handle and to fling it open. She was running on sheer instinct when her sneakers skidded to a stop. The first thing she noticed was the slight impressions left on the carefully vacuumed carpet: footprints. They were men's size nine or ten. The second thing she noticed were the glossy dead grey eyes of the body laying in her bed. The woman couldn't have been a day over 21, but she was very clearly deceased- ivory pale skin, blue tinted lips, and a nonjudgmental yet unwavering stare.

"Oh, shit," was the only thing that came to mind, and before she had time to think too much about it, she flew out of the room, her feet barely touching the floor on her way down the stairs. It wasn't the sight of the dead itself that scared her. It could have been a squatter, sure. But the combination of suspicion and circumstance culminated in the sudden need to get out of there. The smell of gas was stronger, something she noted only absently on her single track path. She reached her exit in seconds flat, practically yanking the door right off of its hinges in her move to escape.

Again, an alert sounded in her mind- obvious and blaring the moment she stepped onto the paved walkway. Automatically she threw an elbow to the right, feeling her arm plow full force into something hard, something that made a solid thudding sound at impact. The shock resonated up her humerus, absorbing into her bicep. Blood flow rushed to her thighs but she only had enough time to prepare for a forward lunge, not enough to execute it. Taut arms entangled her limbs and immobilized her. She felt herself drawn to the ground by gravity, still clutching the change bowl from the table tightly in her hand. She knew she was going down, but she never experienced the impact. After a pounding prick to her throat, she felt a rush of warmth and then nothing. The world went black.

Moments later, unbeknownst to her, the townhouse exploded in a white-orange flash of fire.

* * *

He was right, and he was wrong. Nicky Parsons had fallen into the pattern of hiding quickly and habits she learned from her agency employment made some of it easier. She could blend and she thought she could tell just when she needed to move. Chances were she made several unnecessary relocations in a short time, but at this point she was aware she couldn't risk it. What wasn't easier and what she didn't believe would ever become easier was the absolute and all consuming solitude that such a life on the run brought. She couldn't have friends, not even acquaintances. She couldn't share stresses or concerns. She couldn't share anything with anyone besides the simple story she had concocted. After fleeing several cities in Morocco, she had finally settled in Tunisia.

She spent several days as a tourist, sipping strong coffee in quiet cafes, watching the locals move and conduct business, watching everyone interact to get a feel for the dynamics between races, religions, and sexes. She knew she could never pass as a local based solely on appearance so she attempted to portray the next best thing: a widowed Frenchwoman in search of a new life by herself. She'd decided her husband was a tailor, and neither she nor he had ever received formal secondary education. In order to secure low level employment, she knew she had to dress the part. With much reluctance she had swiped the wallet of a man she passed on the street. She took only the paper money and dropped the rest of the wallet casually as she continued along on foot. While certain no one was aware of the theft, she felt poorly about it. She wrestled with issues of integrity before surrendering the stage to the part of her mind that attested to its necessity. She needed the money in order to purchase appropriate clothes and she needed appropriate clothes in order to merge properly with her cover story. Merging with her story was- most likely- a matter of life of death and compared to dying, taking a day's wage from a stranger took priority.

Feeling her heart rate steadily rise, she stepped quietly into a small women's clothing store. She could tell from the window the establishment was geared toward female professionals which was exactly what she needed. She took a quick peek at the first price tag she saw and she estimated she could perhaps purchase a skirt and suit jacket set. That would probably be all she could afford. She'd have to make do with the blouses she already possessed, which caused a fleeting sense of panic to sweep through her core. As she reached out to flip through a rack of modest skirts, she saw her hand was trembling. Outside of the fake safety of her coffee shop, she felt too exposed. She felt the need to run again. She felt fear creeping up into the back of her throat- bitter and hot. She was frozen by it.

After an impossible amount of time, Nicky was startled back to her senses by a low woman's voice from behind her. She spun around; her brown eyes wide with hidden guilt, her hand still up and poised to flip through the clothing hangers. The lady was small and stout, a somber black hijab covering her hair. Her brown skin was slightly loosened by wrinkles, a result of both age and the sun. She was speaking rapidly, words Nicky didn't understand. Immediately Nicky's expression turned apologetic.

"I'm sorry, I don't speak Arabic," she interjected in French, coyly sliding a lock of darkly dyed hair behind an ear.

"Oh," the older woman answered slowly. After the gears in her mind almost visibly shifted, she began speaking again, this time in heavily accented and somewhat broken French. "You need the clothes to wear?"

Quickly Nicky nodded, gesturing to the garment rack. "I need something neutral and professional," she answered. After noting the lady's willing expression, she decided that asking for a little help wouldn't hurt. "What would you suggest?"

The woman suddenly sprang into a maternal flutter of activity, snatching skirts and shirts and blouses straight from the racks, tossing them into Nicky's arms, ignoring the first befuddled and then concerned look on her face. Parsons allowed the impromptu spree to continue for nearly a minute before again interrupting the woman's Arabic ramblings. "I-I'm sorry, but I don't have enough money for all of this." The poor old woman looked instantly crushed and Nicky was at a loss. In silence, Nicolette selected enough clothing to exhaust her current finances and then moved to the register. As the lady placed the offered money into the till, Nicky spoke up again. "You wouldn't happen to need some help around this shop, would you?"

Eyes lighting to life once again, the woman looked up to nod. "You sew well?"

"Yes. I learned from my husband. He was a tailor," Nicky recited automatically. The lie flowed right from her lips, effortlessly. There was a point in her life where she knew she would be saddened by this flawless act of dishonesty but that point was long past. Schoolyard morality didn't apply to her world anymore. "My name is Adrienne Michaud." She attempted to recall proper Tunisian etiquette before taking a stab in the dark and extending her palm for a formal handshake.

Her guess was not ill founded. A real smile blossomed on the elderly lady's face as the handshake was accepted. "I am Ghada Nejem," she replied as Nicky's hand was released. Closing the cash register, Ghada shuffled from behind the counter to pat Nicky's lower back and start to usher her into a back room. "We have coffee and talk. We talk and then maybe you sew, yes?"

Parsons knew her answer only after it sprang from her mouth. "Yes, of course." It was an odd turn of luck, and it was most likely a kind of luck she would have to turn her back on and abandon soon enough, but for now it was perfect. It would get her off of the streets, her face out of sight. And, if everything went well, it would get her some money in her pocket.


	5. Smooth Sailing

_Disclaimer: Jason Bourne's not mine! And I'm definitely not profiting from the use of his name._

_Thanks to everyone that's read so far and a special thanks to everyone that's reviewed! I've been caught up in school so this chapter was a little slow coming, but blame the lemon. I had to write a story about a lemon._

* * *

David Webb sat at the edge of his firm twin bed, elbows perched on his knees and his gaze fixed on the handle of the door. After days of hiding out in a small cabin in upstate New York, he began to make arrangements to cross the Atlantic. With the country on such high alert, flying would have been far too risky and trains wouldn't get him far enough to be considered safe so he was only left with the option of sailing. He used an alias and paid in cash. The process to board was long and nerve-wracking, but as soon as the commercial ocean liner pulled away from dock, David felt an odd sense of familiarity.

Only something in his brain refused to call that familiarity his own. This time, on this boat, he was David. It all started in the water, it all started on a boat and now- while decidedly poetic- it was hard to believe that it would all end on a boat. There were so many questions left unanswered and just as many ends left untied. There was Nicky, of course, and there was Landy. He admired her bravery. It was her gesture that ended Blackbriar and it was her gesture that probably saved dozens of lives. But now, in the aftermath, she could be dead. Even Nicky could be dead. Bourne didn't care- such was life. Bourne had learned to spend life fighting death, knowing some day he'd lose. David, however…

Leaving the two individuals who had aided him in his most desperate time was unacceptable. On the ship there was absolutely nothing he could do about it, however. For now, this ship was his safe-haven. If someone was going to try to kill him, they were probably already here. He didn't have an escape but neither would his enemy. David hated this knowledge, but Jason was comfortable with the decision. Bourne was an island, so he felt at peace on this moving island. Webb only felt more isolated than he ever had in his life.

He'd twisted the truth for Hirsch's ears. He remembered his training, sure. He remembered the tanks, the sleep deprivation, and the riling pep talks. More than anything, he remembered the glossy-eyed stare of his very first target, the way the man's head flopped unsupported as the fabric was yanked away. The face was burned into his mind, a permanent psychological scar, but the name was no where to be found. David didn't even have a tickle in his brain that said the information resided somewhere in there. There was no way to make atonement without a name. He could only apologize to a ghost of a face. His head was filled with ghostly faces that swam in and out of his consciousness. Some lingered long enough for vague recognition, but most did not. They were such small snippets that be barely had time to realize they were there before they ducked back into the locked vault of his memory.

Bourne told him to remain in his cabin until they docked in England. Bourne made allowances for food and water, but that was all. Webb, however, couldn't stand the idea of weeks of seclusion. David was no longer Jason, but Jason was still there, whispering from the corners, counting exits and recognizing weapons. Standing in line to board, David realized with increasing disgust that he'd managed to mentally catalogue every member of the ship's security. Even worse, he had calculated the amount of force needed to overpower them. He'd even made a note of which security members he could most easily impersonate, which uniform would fit him best. All of this happened in a matter of seconds. It took longer for him to realize what had happened than it did for the knowledge to click into place.

David knew he wasn't in complete control, but he wasn't sure if he'd ever be safe enough to be able to completely disregard Jason. He didn't know whether he'd ever have to stop running and it was mostly Jason's knowledge that allowed him to survive. David was in the army. He was a member of the special forces, even. Without Jason, he could hold his own against your everyday foe, but he'd seen and experienced the brutality and drive the CIA's black book operations had created in everyday foes. He was the brutality and drive that was created, even. David was in the forefront now, though. So, he was the one to make the executive decision to rise and step out of his physical and mental prison. David was the one to dare emerge into the general population, or at least the small portion of population represented on the ocean vessel. The first step was the hallway. Bourne counted the doors on either side, recalled which two were left empty; David allowed this.

After what seemed like a heavy eternity, he finally arrived at the outside. The salty sea air filled his lungs and sent a jolt of memory through his brain. He stared at the railing, but what he saw was a glimpse of the past- the French fishing boat years ago. He thought perhaps he should now feel less confused and aimless now, but he didn't. Then he had the fisherman. Now he had no one. He could have stayed in that space in time for a while, but a voice broke through to jerk him back into the present. It was the sound of a woman speaking not to him but to someone younger- her voice was a half note higher than he thought it should be and a slower pace. He could even sense a hint of frustration and impatience.

"Honey, for the fourth time, if you go lay down you'll feel better," the woman chided. "The pretty water will be there tomorrow- and the next day and the next."

David looked over slowly to see a tall brunette, slightly overweight and dressed in typical American mother attire: stained blue jeans, a faded t-shirt, and a jacket a size too big. Coming up only just past her hip was who he assumed was her child, a doe-eyed blonde little girl who clung to the rail as though any moment she might flip overboard. Her face was a sickened pale and she stumbled and swayed with the rocking of the boat. Inside David's mind was an argument. It lasted only seconds but it seemed like a lifetime. Bourne said to ignore it. The child would eventually either get used to the boat's rocking or she would give in to her mother's advice. Webb believed in compromise. With no immediate danger in sight, Webb won.

"Um, excuse me," he said after clearing his throat in order to avoid startling the couple. The mother looked over while the child continued to white-knuckle the railing. "I know a little about ships. If you go to the stern- the back of the boat- the motion sickness won't be so bad. It's more weighted back there so it rides lower and steadier."

The mother was wary but nodded. The suggestion was harmless. "Melanie, let's go to the back of the boat, okay? So we don't have to go change your clothes again."

The little girl was determined. She shook her head once in denial. "But I wanna watch the waves."

David paused for a moment and then looked to the kid. Something tugged at his mind, the calling card of a memory deeply buried. It was a familiar sensation and for now he'd ignore it. He was more than willing to explore and probe for context later, but now he had a mission. He had to consider it a mission. Bourne insisted. If it wasn't a mission then it was unnecessary, so after a moment of thought, he crouched down so he was eye to eye with Melanie.

"If you go to the back of the boat, you'll see even more waves. You can see the waves from there without bouncing around so much, okay?"

The little girl was suddenly convinced. The mother offered a single word of thanks as she and her child retreated to the stern. David simply watched the pair retreat through the sparse crowd, resting his forehead against the cool metal rail. Bourne declared the mission a success and Webb declared a distinct need for aspirin.


	6. Jump to the Left

_Both of these characters are actually mine. Imagine that! Most of them aren't, though. And I'm definitely not making money off of this. Frust-sheep! Nope, I'm not saddened. Thanks for taking the time to review!_

* * *

_Eighteen months later..._

Amalia Van slept. It was a light sleep, as fitful and restless as always, her stick-straight jet black hair splayed haphazardly across the simple linen pillowcase. The authority of her cell phone beeped even in her dreams where the dancing faces of the dead floated in mental limbo. She didn't care when she was awake, at least not until recently. Four years of field experience had taught her that the past was, in itself, dead. People, places, and choices long since past could be visited but not resurrected. It was fruitless to try.

She'd been in Pakistan when her long-silent phone gave its chiming alert. She was wary but made contact, and upon contact she was issued an order. She was to take the red-eye out of Islamabad, switch planes in London, and head straight for Langley- no stops, no detours, no changing plans. For four years, her name changed as the situation suited; she was Chiyo Akinawa, Adel Abdul-Rahman, Hong Kim, and most recently Darshana Hray. She was Beta and she was nothing. It felt odd and uncomfortable to try to slip back into the role of Amalia after so long, but a two-hour debriefing that left her with only that. No longer Beta, Chiyo, Hong, or any other, all she was left with was Amalia but Amalia couldn't adapt. Amalia was a relic from a calmer, simpler, more naïve time and she had no place in the world anymore. She wasn't left entirely without direction, but the direction she was offered was a consolation at best. She could continue to work for the CIA- translating or intelligence gathering. She could return to the army. Or, if she chose, she could try to slip back into civilian life with a small apologetic stipend for food and shelter. She left the building and returned to her hotel feeling as if she failed. Now her dreams echoed that defeated sentiment.

In her mind, she was in hell, and Greg Toro with his small town accent and Father Christmas chuckle was the devil. She'd never met him before in her life, never taken orders from him. The only order he gave was to end all orders. He was the judge, jury, and executioner and she was found… not guilty. Not guilty. It was impossible to grasp. Toro was laughing in her dreams as she was forced to strip naked, peel off layers of skin and muscle, until all that remained was her bare and unprotected soul. Amalia could see that soul was a withered, blackened thing, completely without girth or substance. It was disgusting but also sad. Her skeleton rattled, the bones clicking together with no real rhythm or purpose. They scraped and scratched until slowly she began to realize that the sound wasn't inside of her head but outside of it.

Amalia's eyes popped open and stared into the darkness. She silently pulled air into her lungs, her ears on high alert for any sound that was essentially wrong. Adrenaline rushed full speed into her system as she spotted the tiny wedge of light from the door to the hallway. Her hand slipped beneath her pillow, fingers wrapping around the cool and comforting heft of her gun. She laid there, counting to thirty in her mind, but nothing happened. The door didn't open further, there were no shadows beneath it to indicate a body standing, and for a moment she considered the possibility that in her confusion she had simply forgotten to close it fully. That idea was instantly hushed. She was too careful and too meticulous to have made such a careless mistake. Sliding low like a snake, she slipped down from her bed. The thin covers made the slightest rustle but it sounded like a thunder clap to her. Nearly on her belly, Amalia crawled toward the door, her breathing slow and quiet. It could be nothing, of course. But her gut told her that it wasn't nothing. It was something. She was right.

There was a shadow, just in the corner and nearly out of the doorframe, but it was there. Amalia stood and pressed her body against the wall, craning her neck to peer out the peephole. All she saw was hallway. She let out a relieved breath, but instantly she knew she shouldn't. One part of her brain cried out no as she reached a hand out to press the door shut. Beta said no, but Amalia wasn't fast enough to respond. In an instant, the door exploded inward with incredible force, closing halfway only to hurl open again. The first blow bounced off of Amalia's outstretched hand, straining muscles and ligaments to send a bolt of pain from fingertip to shoulder. She had been able to prepare for the second and turned her body to absorb the impact with her back. She spun to slip out from behind the door and instantly saw a small figure rushing at her. No- it wasn't small, she realized as she was thrown to the floor. It was hunched over. She hit the ground with stunning force, allowing the intruder enough of an upper hand to chop at Amalia's right hand, her fingers going lax as the brachial nerve was tweaked, the gun falling to the ground.

Beta took over. As the slender figure reached for the gun with a gloved hand, Beta threw a fist as its temple. The figure struck back, jamming a knee into Amalia's groin. Instantly, her leg went numb and heavy. They grappled for what felt like hours, but it was only seconds. Finally, both Amalia and Beta were paralyzed with a brutal blow to the throat. Blackness swirled and flowed, and they were allowed only a moment for realization. Cold metal pressed against Amalia's temple. The angle was adjusted and then the darkness took over.

The figure rose, dabbing at its bloodied nose with a sleeve. It panted to catch its breath and then slipped calmly to the door, closing and latching it before setting to work. Fallen chairs were righted and Amalia's body was adjusted. The gun was placed in her hand. It had her fingerprints and hers alone. The hotel's security footage would return from its tampered loop with no one the wiser. The death, by its very nature, would be dubbed a suicide. Army lieutenant Amalia Van had shot herself in the head after receiving an honorable discharge due to psychological issues. The figure, slim and lithe, opened a window and stepped onto the ledge. Gloved fingertips hooked on and yanked the window closed before the stranger scaled their way down to the ground. The streetlights caught nothing but a glimmer of chestnut hair as Senka- once Morena, once a daughter, once a child- slipped effortlessly into the cityscape.


	7. Step to the Right

_Usual Disclaimer Because No Suing, Please: I don't own Bourne or Landy, and I'm not pretending I do._

_On another note! I had both this chapter and chapter 6 written at the same time and couldn't decide which should go first. I tend to view things as movie-style scenes in my head, and in this case editing was basically a draw. In fact, previously, I wasn't even sure I should have referred to Morena by her name. Let me know! Right choice, wrong choice. I'm just trying to maintain momentum and reveal things when appropriate._

* * *

Pamela Landy had- like the phoenix- rose from the ashes of a ruined career. Her reincarnation was not official, nor would it ever be, but day by day she felt certain that her life wasn't at a dangerous precipice. It had taken time, of course. At first she felt as though she was only just barely treading water, but slowly she began to gain footing and momentum. Two successes in six months lead to increased security privileges. Which, in turn, lead to more success. In all, she had managed to track down and call in eight of the drifting operatives. She no longer feared every car that paused in front of her home or every stranger that glanced sideways at her in the supermarket. Enough time had passed that no one remembered her name or her face. The country had slowly but surely done their job in turning a blind eye to the past. It was never forgiven but it was certainly forgotten.

Landy now sat alone in a somewhat crowded café with a steaming cup of coffee by one hand and a buttered croissant by the other. She was waiting for her weekly meeting with Greg Toro to begin. Martin Rike, her stubbornly cold assistant, was nearby, transparently observing her from his chair. He'd ordered only a glass of water and hadn't touched it yet. He seemed like a robot, programmed to only watch and record her every minute movement. He had an unseemly knack for picking up subtle changes in mood and routine, which was perhaps the most irritating thing about him.

"You're tense," the chilled voice chimed in from Landy's right rear. "It's obvious and drawing attention."

Landy's mood ring and personal trainer all in one- Rike was irritating but unfortunately right nearly all of the time. She took a breath and upon exhaling she settled more comfortably into her seat. With a brisk glance at her simple gold watch, she tersely replied. "He's twelve minutes late."

"He'll be here soon," Martin crooned in a manner that was in no way comforting or reassuring.

Opening the front of her navy suit jacket, Pam pulled her cell phone from an inner pocket, flipping it open and punching in a speed dial command. One ring in, she hung up. The door had opened in the meantime and she heard the no-nonsense chirp of Toro's phone as he stepped in. It was perfect timing, but the perfection of it gave rise to a surge of discomfort in the instinctive zone of Landy's brain. She struggled to maintain the air of leisure but gave up the battle as she watched Greg, her superior, approach.

Toro sat and briskly waved off an approaching waitress. Again alarms sounded in Pamela's mind. Their meetings were typically masked in cordiality and niceties. This was far from the norm and even Rike knew it. Out of the corner of her eye, Martin had straightened in the slightest. Toro wasted no time with hello.

"Find Bourne," he intoned, hands on the table, body leaned in toward Landy.

She blinked once and then tilted her head to the side, responding calmly. "I'm working on it. You've read the file. You know the story. It's not as easy as tracking down a phone signal."

"Work harder," Toro rebutted, his volume dropping a notch to change his whole tone. It was grim.

"Why? What's going on? What changed?" Pam was met with an intimidating stare, but her resolve didn't budge. She wasn't green and she was no fool. For a year and a half she'd been allowed to work at her own pace, turning in names and locations as they came. Truth be told, she hadn't even attempted to contact Jason or Nicky. In her mind they deserved a couple of years of peace. She'd flagged passports, kept up appearances, but her heart- at the moment- wasn't in pinpointing their locations.

"Six bodies, Pam. We have six bodies on our hands, all former Blackbriar operatives. Ask the papers, it was suicide. We can't keep covering this shit up. Are you the one managing to get one over on trained assassins? Because if you are, you're wasting your time sitting behind that desk."

"I'll agree with you there. I'm wasting my time behind a desk," Landy replied quickly. Immediately she wished she had handled the comment more professionally but she didn't have time to play coy.

"This isn't a game, Pam. I'm trying to clean up a mess here, and now I've got an even bigger mess. I've got to explain why people keep ending up dead." Toro's voice ended gruffly but after a moment's pause he once again slipped into a more conversational level. "I've been sitting and thinking about it for a while, you know? Scratching my head, wondering who- if not us- wants these people out of the picture. Who's got a grudge? Or who needs them out of the picture in order to feel… safe, for example?"

"It's not Bourne," she replied factually. It was a matter of logic, yes, but more than that she felt in her gut that it was impossible. "Since losing his memory, he hasn't been the hunter. His actions have been a direct response to _being_ hunted."

"Bullshit," Toro scoffed. "You don't call that crap he pulled in New York hunting?"

"No, I don't." Landy stood her ground. "We came after him first, Greg. No, not we. You. You went after him first and he fought back."

"You think that he thinks he can just go and live a normal life now? Not with other black ops assassins out there. He's lost it, Pam. He's paranoid. He lost his memory and then he lost his mind. What makes you think he can just leave well enough alone?"

"He's not…" Landy stopped and shook her head. Bourne wasn't crazy. Never had Bourne lost it. However, arguing that relatively inconsequential point with Greg was at its best a pointless endeavor. "Okay. Let's go with your theory. Jason's gallivanting around the place, picking off people one by one. How? How's he getting the intel to find these people and kill them?" She was met with a heavy, meaningful stare and Pam instantly realized its weight. "Me?" She couldn't help but let out a light laugh, clicking a fingernail against her coffee cup. "You're kidding, right? I'll just keep pretending I don't know you have my computer and phones tapped. I'll keep pretending you don't have GPS on my car and a tag on my credit cards and bank account. I'll even continue to act as though you don't have Martin there recording every movement I make and that you probably don't have lines on every pay phone in a three mile radius. If you'd like, you can keep pretending that- despite that- I could somehow slip communication with Jason Bourne past you."

"Find Bourne," Toro chimed, not missing a beat. He stared a moment longer to further drive home the point and then abruptly stood, disappearing into a waiting car out front. Martin promptly stood and went to grab Pam's arm to direct her out at well. With a disgusted sigh, she held a palm up, immediately halting him. Reaching for her cup, she sipped at her now lukewarm coffee and closed her eyes, quieting the roar of frustration echoing in her mind and attempting to formulate a plan- either a plan to actually find him or a plan to procrastinate on doing so. Finally, she decided she had to do as Greg demanded. If she didn't, someone else would, and they wouldn't have the desire to give him due warning.


	8. Scarsizza Fa Lu Prezzu

_I don't own Jason Bourne, David Webb, or Marie. If I did, I might make them get me some coffee- I need the caffeine. _

_Three chapters, rapid-fire! I figured I'd keep going while the muse was restless. Toss your thoughts my way if the desire strikes._

* * *

A year and a half had only given David Webb more time to run, hide, and remember. Keeping a journal of pictures and slivers of memory was an old habit he had resurrected with a deep sense of sadness. It had been Marie's idea and he liked to pretend as though he felt continuing the practice kept a part of her alive. The truth was that he felt no such thing. Marie was gone, fished out of murky Indian water, and probably given an untouchable's burial. Perhaps it was that fact that bothered him most. He had abandoned her in death. Yes, he knew he had to go or die as well. The fighter in him would not have allowed him to dwell only enact vengeance, but now every corner he effortlessly turned, every time he returned home- where ever his home then was- to find everything fine, every day that passed without incident made the fighter slip further and further into his subconscious. Without the driving need to attack and survive he had a painful amount of time to simply sit and think.

Not much had come back from the shadowy pool of memory. Mostly he dreamt of things he already knew, already remembered. Mostly he'd pass a figure on the street and for a moment think with delusional shock that it was _her._ He was stuck in a time warp. He could neither go forward nor back. He couldn't settle into some semblance of a normal life or normal routine either. Bourne would not allow it. It was still not safe, and he was certain that no matter how long this quiet continued he would not be able to feel safe. That man reading a newspaper could always be concealing a weapon. The woman pushing a stroller may not be a mother at all. The compulsion to keep moving took him from England to Germany to Poland. He traced his way across the continent. Currently he resided in Agrigento on the southern coast of Sicily. He felt he had perhaps set a record, having lingered in a back apartment in a tiny stone building for nearly four months.

With no real purpose beside living and paying attention, he had slipped in with tourist groups and viewed the towering ancient structures that littered the town and surrounding area- huge rock monuments to the gods left over from the time of the Greeks. He had come to find it refreshingly humbling to sit just off the beaten path, sipping ice cold water with a single foot planted in the wheel groove of a long-forgotten road. Today, like many days as of late, he sat dwarfed by the columns of the ruined Temple of Hercules, propped carefully on a crumbling step. He felt something he perhaps hadn't felt before. He felt an odd sense of belonging and fraternity with the old, collapsing monument. It was once revered and worshipped, carefully crafted for its purpose. More than that, it was once dedicated to the ideals of the perfect man- protector, destroyer, warrior. And yet Hercules was a lover. But Hercules had murdered his beloved wife, and David realized it wasn't his hand that pulled the trigger- extinguishing Marie's precious, beautiful life- but he also knew it might as well have been. In fact, he may as well have shot her dead in front of her car, but the other side of his mind testified that- while it was only a tiny consolation- the time they had together changed him. It had made him human again. Being human hurt.

Covered by a sliver of shadow from the single standing column, he felt brotherhood and a glimpse of peace, as though maybe he was finally allowed to be there- somewhere, anywhere. The summer sun beat down harshly on the back of his neck, turning skin red and drawing forth beads of sweat. He heat didn't bother him. He knew well enough to head back home before his water supplies ran low and he'd long ago learned the schedule of guided tours. A peek at his watch told him any moment he would see a throng of people trickle along a curve, most of them American, most of them poorly dressed for the climate. He wasn't wrong. A clump of visitors rounded the temple path, clothed in sleeveless tops, shorts, and flimsy foam sandals. David knew they'd suffer sunburn the likes of which they'd never before imagined, but in no way did he feel compelled to dismount his honorable perch to advise them otherwise. That was, until, he saw the tail end of the tourist crowd. There was a family- mother, father, and a dreadfully weary son. In all of his days of observation, all he'd ever seen were newlywed couples, trios of friends, and the occasional retired couple wanting to see something unusual, something not quite the Eiffel Tower, something more exotic and meaningful. This family, this oddity, caught his attention as all oddities do. Of course, he didn't feel threatened. He felt something else, a stirring in his brain, and in this calm he wanted it not to stir but to explode. He wanted to be able to grasp what was familiar, and he wanted to shout at the parents to take their son out of the sun already. Couldn't they tell from his stumbling gait and sweaty clothes that he was moving step by step into danger?

The next thought he had was to avoid the middle of the final step as it was wobbly and enjoyed twisting ankles. He had launched himself out of his lounge without noticing but now that he noticed, he understood. His footfalls were light and almost nonexistent as he jogged across the rocky terrain, clearing the distance between himself and the family in mere seconds. The tour guide's spiel in heavily accent English was halted and Jason simply held a hand out for the darkly tanned man to either continue or just stay out of the way. "You didn't bring enough water," he intoned as he dropped to a knee in front of the kid. His voice wasn't accusative, just factual and low. Shrugging off his dusty linen bag, he unzipped it and pulled out a spare bottle of water. It wasn't cold, but it was liquid and after breaking the seal, he passed it to the boy. The boy eyed David suspiciously before the woman, the mother, reached out to take the water and deposit it into the child's hand. As the kid began to gulp down the water in huge mouthfuls, the tour guide decided it was nothing serious and that he'd probably rather be rid of the silly Americans on time so he continued his speech. The group began to move away, but Webb reached up to grab the father's sleeve when he attempts to usher his family along. "If you want to keep going, I know this tour. But stop for a minute."

David reached out to pull the bottle away from the boy's mouth, softening his tone. "Give it a few minutes and then drink the rest. Too fast, you'll get sick." When the mother fished tissues out of her fanny pack and reached to wipe sweat from her son's face, again Webb put a stop to it. "Don't do that. There's a slight breeze."

With perhaps a surge of testosterone or perhaps with the realization the situation may be serious, the father stepped from behind in order to push his son back and block him from the stranger. David was left staring at a groin until he slowly lifted his gaze to meet the man's. "That's enough, sir," the father said forcefully, the word "sir" spat out as though it were an obscenity. "We're just going to be on our way. We've got to catch up with our tour group and continue the tour we paid for."

David had to take a breath and check his reaction before rising, nodding and squinting slightly while looking away. He could literally feel Jason Bourne rise from his seat at the corners of his mind, primed by the nonverbal offensive. He led with a question, seemingly conversational and innocent. "Right. What's your name?"

The man was obviously taken aback. He had probably figured the simple intimidation tactic would work well enough to avoid further interaction. But it hadn't. "That's none of your business," he responded but that wasn't the answer Bourne was looking for. The husband got a firm sideways glance from Jason and found himself inexplicably chilled. Before he could censor himself, the answer spilled from his lips. "James Wright."

Jason nodded, inhaling and then gesturing, creating an invisible circle with his finger. "You're going to need to turn around, James." Again, he was met with macho resistance and he barely managed to refrain from grabbing the man's arm and forcing him again. "James, take a look at your son. I hate repeating myself, so don't make me do it."

Something about the stranger's countenance or tone was both threatening and authoritative. James Wright was not used to being spoken to like that and his face flushed in anger. From a couple of yards off, the tour group had stopped paying attention to the tale of Hercules and instead focused on the family and the outsider. They could feel the tension in the air and by human nature, they had to watch. Dead gods were one thing. An impending brawl was another. They weren't entirely disappointed. Foolishly, James balled up a fist and swung his knuckles at Jason's jaw. It was an automatic reaction when Bourne ducked his head back to avoid the blow. He grabbed the angry father's wrist and used his own momentum against him, spinning the guy around to face his horrified family while twisting his arm behind his back at a typically subduing angle. From the distance, a part of Jason's consciousness could register the clicking of cameras and the capturing of photographs. A low mutter swept over the masses.

Jason stepped forward into James, nudging his arm once in a way he knew would send an aching twinge through James' shoulder. And then he spoke, mouth to ear. "You're not being very responsible, James. And that was a very dumb move. You're going to listen to me and then you're going to obey. You're going to gather up your family. You're going to take your boy into the shade and let him finish the water and then you're going to head straight back to your hotel- do not pass go. Do not collect two hundred dollars. This is not a game. You don't want to spend the remainder of your vacation in the hospital because your child acquired heatstroke due to _your _negligence." In one swift movement, Jason released James and the stubborn man once again tried to swing at Bourne. This time with a simple, effortless movement too fast for the father to comprehend send James unceremoniously to the ground. The sound of Wright's ego shattering was almost audible.

Someone in the crowd snickered and as James stumbled back to his feet, the crowd was subjected to a withering glare. He had lost his fight with Jason, but he was more than willing to pick one with a member of that crowd. Jason was poised for another attack, muscles tensed and primed for action, but the attack never came. Taking over control, the mother rushed forward and ushered her husband and son away, parting ways with both the tour group and Bourne. Jason watched until they were out of sight and then he too turned to regard the tourists. When a giggling sorority girl lifted her cell phone and snapped a picture of him face-on, his insides shifted harshly. It took two seconds for him to debate between destroying the phone and hurrying away. He'd already drawn enough attention, however, so only one option remained. He picked up his backpack and ran, shoes kicking up dust and dirt as he propelled himself across the landscape. Yes, Bourne's thoughts echoed in David's mind. Here had been nice, but it was time to start moving again. As he fled full speed for his apartment, an image danced tauntingly in front of his eyes. It was Marie, it was Paris. Her mouth moved but he couldn't hear a word she said. And then she smiled.


	9. Check

_Disclaimer! All previous disclaimers apply to this disclaimer._

_Special thanks to Tallent, Tigeress-10, and Frust-sheep for submitting reviews! They're absolutely appreciated._

* * *

As Pam figured, Toro's threats were empty. At least by the time she'd given up her fruitless search at home and ventured out in her traced car, any actual threat his words had contained had drained away. Martin Rike followed her in his own car, and he followed her into the building. He was never more than five feet behind her and for the first time in a long time, Landy could understand the gut instinct to simply knee someone in the groin for no other reason but irritation. She stepped over the CIA's inlaid logo on the floor and came to a stop at the front desk. The faces around her registered nothing but disinterest. Even the eyes of the agent at the desk contained no shade of recognition- only boredom.

"I need to speak with Department Director Gregory Toro," she spoke in a short and clipped no-nonsense tone. The short blonde at the desk popped her gum once and then typed the name into the computer console in front of her. She stopped, typed it again, and then shook her head.

"T-o-r-o?" the clerk questioned with a lazily lofted brow. Landy nodded while taking a glance back over her shoulder at Rike. The man had no ability to blend- none at all. He stuck out like a sore thumb in his stiff suit, like a poorly paid and mislead extra in a _Men in Black_ movie. "I'm sorry, ma'am," the young woman interrupted, bringing Pam's attention back forward. "I can't find his extension here. Which department is he in?"

Pamela's brows twitched. She knew it wouldn't be as easy as simply asking for him at the most public desk of all, but somehow with Martin's eyes boring a hole in her back, her patience was grossly tested. She didn't know precisely what it was about the man, but he both frightened and angered her at once. "Call him on the intercom," Landy commanded. Her tone left no room for argument but there was argument anyway. The young employee blanched and shook her head quickly.

"I-I'm sorry, ma'am. I'm not authorized to do that." Landy met the response with a sigh and leaned in. She knew how to speak and act in order to assert power over those beneath her and for all the girl knew Pam was so far up the ladder she could see from there to Rome. Landy was sure to display herself in any way that would reinforce that misconception.

"You _are_ authorized to do that, O'Connor. You are authorized to do so because I just authorized it," Pam intoned, elbows on the counter. Her glance at the woman's nametag was imperceptible and the reaction it garnered was favorable. For a moment's time, the woman seemed to have forgotten she even wore a nametag. As she pulled out her wallet in order to show some identification, she heard rapidly approaching footsteps from her forward left. She looked up in time to see Greg's scowling face emerge from behind the security gates. "Nevermind. I've found him." She regarded the desk clerk once more and then turned to face Gregory. Calmly, she dropped her hands back to her sides, offering Toro a small smile. The expression was not returned.

"What the fuck do you think you're doing, Pam?" he hissed in a harsh whisper, his fingers wrapping hard around her elbow. Immediately, he began to lead her into the back, past the metal detectors and security, flashing his badge when required but never halting his hurried pace. Martin attempted to follow but he was stopped and from behind her, Landy heard Rike break character for the first time. As he tried to negotiate through the maze of security, she could hear a ribbon of frustration trickle into his voice. Something Pam didn't know existed within her stirred; it was sheer, pointless satisfaction. She kept perfect pace with Toro, her shoulders squared and her head held high. It wasn't the effect Toro was hoping for. Rather than a student's march to the principal's office, Landy was creating a friendly and equal coworker dynamic for all to see. She had learned that sometimes it was indeed the small power-plays that counted the most. She could feel from Gregory's grip that he was upset with the effect, and anger was one of the things that was going to give her the upper hand.

Pam was navigated through hallways and down stairways and with every step the confidence that had only lingered in her mind upon entry grew stronger. She finally felt completely in control the moment Toro swiped his ID card for entry into his office. He pushed down the door handle with a loud clink and shoved the door open, nudging Pam none too gently inside. She moved right to the chair set in front of his desk and unbuttoned her suit jacket, sitting with her hands folded neatly in her lap. She was the one that was visibly in charge of her emotions. Toro caught onto the game quickly and as the door swung shut he forced the tension from his shoulders but his cheeks and ears were still flushed- the tiny capillaries flooded from raised blood pressure. He didn't sit straight away. He made a last attempt at intimidation, propping himself at the edge of his desk and glaring down at Landy.

"What did I tell you about coming back here, Pam?" The question was, of course, rhetorical with an angry gruff edge. "You're just lucky I got to you before anyone else did."

Pamela wasn't going to play his game. She had her own game in mind, her own strategy, and playing up any advantage he may have wasn't part of the plan. Landy didn't get where she was by being a pawn. No, she was the queen. She was versatile, mentally agile, and she could adapt to anyone's tactic. A year and a half had given her enough time to size him up and wait to make her move. She had patience where he didn't. She didn't have anything to lose, either. He had his job still. It was his name all over success or failure. Instead of responding, she simply sat. The silence was heavy, but it didn't lie on Landy's shoulders. It was all on Toro. Pam met his gaze flawlessly, waiting for him to speak again. Once his mouth opened, she knew what was going to come out. His shoulders slumped and he tilted his head back, pulling his glasses away from his face in order to rub at his eyes. "What in god's name do you want?"

She smiled placidly. Bingo. "I want everything," she responded, leaning slightly in toward him. It was a move he'd attempted on her before- simple coercion maneuvers. It had worked on her once, but she'd filed it away. She watched as the color drained from Toro's face. His eyes rapidly dropped down and he stared at her as though she had begun speaking Greek. Her demand had either taken him by surprise or affirmed his worst case scenario. It was entirely possible that it had accomplished both.

"You can't have everything, Pam," Toro retorted quickly. "You've got all you're qualified to have."

Pam nodded once and pursed her lips, unclasping her hands to lean away from Greg. "I understand, sir," she made sure to put emphasis on the "sir." It was important. "My only problem with that is… you can change that. You're working under the radar with every rattle in the toybox at your disposal. Why aren't I?" Toro went to respond to that, but Pam didn't give him a chance. She tilted her head the smallest fraction to one side and continued over the first consonant of Greg's protestation. "Don't answer that. I'm with you, Greg. I hate bullshit. So, let's talk shop. You need me. That much is obvious. Nearly nineteen months later, if you didn't need me, I'd be gone. I'd be in Smalltown, Alaska shoveling my way through waist-deep snow or I'd be stuck in administrative wasteland. Not here. And certainly not working on the most important assignment in your entire career."

"You're going to pray for a winter wonderland if you walk out of here alive, Pamela…" Toro intoned, his jaw locked tight with barely restrained indignity. Landy scoffed and stood, her posture impeccable as she now took the higher position- literally and figuratively. Her intense, wise eyes bore right into Toro's gaze but she continued to smile.

"I thought we were going to cut the bullshit. I hoped this would go smoother, so I wouldn't have to add insult to injury. But you want to play hardball? So be it," Pam clapped her hands together once, palms pressed together as she took a step away from Toro and then turned to once again face him. Each move she'd planned on the way here. She knew in the game of power balances even blinking at the wrong pace could be a sign of weakness. "I know I'm not the only one working on this project, Greg. I _know_ that. I know you've at least got two other people on it, and they have every resource this agency has developed- probably even some new, experimental ones I don't even know about. And the fact remains that you still haven't found Bourne. Hell, Greg. You haven't even found _Nicky,_ for Christ sakes. And she's just logistics. She worked behind a desk." Pam unclasped her hands in order to gesture, palms spread out to indicate some sort of wide span. "Every single name you have, every agent you've found, you've gotten from me. Go ahead and nod, Greg. You know that's the truth."

Toro did no such thing, but he didn't make any gesture of denial either. He sat at the edge of his desk, his shoulders dipping lower as seconds ticked by. Landy stood in tall, strong silence while Greg did everything he could to keep from sighing. Finally, Toro needed sound and he needed a real, solid answer. "What… do you want?"

"I'm pretty sure I already told you that. If you don't recall, perhaps you should have your memory tested," Pam stepped back to Greg. "I want your team. I want your resources. Let's face it. You've got the brawn, but without the brains all you're doing is searching for a needle in a haystack- straw by straw. If you're waiting for Jason Bourne to make a mistake, both you and I are going to rot away in front of the monitors. You need direction, and you know I am the only one here that has experience with him."

Toro rose up defensively, this time speaking confidently over Landy. "You have experience betraying your country with him!"

Landy was absolutely unrattled and replied without missing a beat. "I have experience exposing a corrupt government organization with him. We can go through that argument again, if you'd like, but as you can see I'm not behind bars. He trusts me. If you think you're going to get that level of trust… _any _level of trust… using some other agent, you are gravely mistaken. If you want this job done without another drop of blood shed, then you need me on board- _fully_ on board. I want everything. I need top-level clearance. I need control of incoming and outgoing information. I need at least two people to work under me, twenty-four hours a day. I need every single monitor and machine at my disposal, and I need unrestricted access to all Treadstone and Blackbriar material."

"I can't-" Toro began to counter, but he couldn't even finish his sentence before Pam nodded and strolled to the door, opening it up and moving to step out.

"Okay. Fair enough, then. I'll show myself out. See you later, Greg," she strolled halfway out the door before she felt Toro's hand on her wrist, tugging her back into the room with the door falling shut. Pamela turned to face him and she knew in an instant she had won. She had in fact won the moment she gained entrance into his office.

"How long?" Toro asked, his voice hushed as though he was unaware his office was soundproofed.

"Give me two weeks," Landy said, her tone full of clarity. Toro started to shake his head and she simply shrugged. "He can hide forever and you know it. He was trained not to exist. You're either looking at two weeks… or never."

Toro audibly groaned and let go of her arm, crossing his office to sit behind his desk. In silence, he tapped away at his keyboard and finally- as if his hand itself was weighted by the world- he unlocked a desk drawer and held out a scan card for Pam. "You have two weeks. In two weeks, that card will no longer grant you access to anything. In two weeks, trying to use that card will get you indefinitely detained." With the sigh of an exhausted man, Greg leaned back in his seat, the polished black leather sighing with him.

Landy gave a single nod and withheld the smile her mind wanted to allow. "Understood. It's a pleasure working with you... sir." She opened the door and stepped out, her fingers wrapped around the edges of that precious plastic card. As the door swung closed behind her, she heard Greg's final comment.

"Don't you disappoint me, Pam."


	10. Scrapbooking

_Disclaimer: All previous disclaimers still apply!_

_Thanks to everyone who's read and especially those who have spoken up via review. I appreciate it more than I let on- it's kind of a thrill! I'm sort of still feeling my way around in the dark with this. I vaguely know where I want to go and how to get there, but there continues to be doubt since I've never written or 'published' anything like this before. So again, thanks to readers and reviewers and please bear with me if the flow of new chapters slows. I just got a new job._

* * *

Pamela Landy was first met with the sounds of organized chaos. Fingers tapped at keyboards, telephones were picked up and set down, low voices chattered with urgency. A desk ran the length of parallel sides of the room, manned with bodies and stocked with computers, phone sets, printers, and fax machines. At the farthest wall from her was an entire wall papered with monitor screens the side of large screen televisions. The screens could be used to view separately or as one large picture. At the moment, they displayed a large map of the United States, seven black spots marring the topography of the country. She stood at the perimeter watching for exactly thirty seconds before stepped into the center of the storm. "I'm going to need everyone's attention. Stop whatever it is you're doing, say goodbye to who you're talking to, and look this way. I don't care _what_ you're doing. It can wait." Her voice rang out strong and authoritative- a perfect mix of leadership and assertion- and it did its job. In a short amount of time, the noise in the room dialed down to as close as silence as it would get. Someone in the back right corner muffled a cough, pens tapped either impatiently or anxiously on desks, but that was it. She had more people than she thought she would. There were six in all and the moment all twelve eyes were locked on her, she started to speak again. 

"Those dots, are those the fallen agents?" She's met with silent stares and finally she just points to a face which gives her the answer she needed. Yes. "How long ago was the latest reported?"

"Four hours ago, sir—ma'am. Ma'am," the young brunette man stuttered, looking as stunned as if someone had abruptly snuck up, smacked him in the face, and ran off into the horizon. The ID card clipped to the collar of his shirt had him labeled as George Turner. Pam nodded and turns to move down the alley between the two banks of desks.

"I want all the information we have on that agent up on the screen. And I want- in my hands- the file for every other fallen agent in the order in which they were killed. I want them numbered up there on the screen. One's the first, seven's this guy here..." The picture and information popped up in the upper left two screens and Landy continued. "Seven's this guy, Danner. I need details and pictures of all of the murders. You… the right bank, you're working on past. You get me everything we know about what's already happened. I even want police reports and any witness reports we have." Pamela gestures for the three to get to work and then she turns to face the left bank of employees. She pulls out her cell phone and tosses it to a girl, Kelly Waynesboro. "Kelly, you get that reprogrammed with my old number. Write it down. I'm not repeating it. 757-555-7421. Check the records to see if anyone's tried to contact that number any time in the past nineteen months. Misdialing, drunk dialing, I don't care. If someone called it, get me the source number."

As Waynesboro got to work, Landy moved down the line, to the remaining duo. "You two- I want you putting out seize and detain warrants for David Webb and Nicolette Parsons. Get their faces out there. Alert American officials, but I don't want you to focus on them. Get this out to European and African authorities" After a pause, Pam has to snap her fingers in order to stop the two employees from getting to work. "I want this public. I want this playing on every major broadcast station in the world. I want their names and faces on every television screen and newspapers, and I want them mentioned on every radio station. Chances are we can knock Paris, Berlin, London- anywhere they've already made a mark- off the list, but let's not count those out." She stopped and gazed meaningfully at them. The look on their faces was transparent- they couldn't believe what she was suggesting. To make a clandestine operation public was to defeat its purpose. "I didn't tell you to give details. Get their names and faces out there. I know what I'm doing. _You_ don't haveto understand."

Landy heard the sounds of bodies and mind springing to work and she turned to pace back toward her post near the door. She saw Gregory Toro there, standing stiff and tense, his pulse beating hard in his temples. His brows were lifted to a peak and he didn't need to ask. Pam wouldn't make him ask, either. Hands on her hips, she stopped right before him, nodding her head back toward the wall of monitors and the frenzied staff. When she explained, it couldn't be easier. "You spent a year and a half trying to find him. You couldn't do it. Now, he'll find us." The resulting expression on her male counterpart's face was priceless. He was embarrassed. It was obvious to Pam he hadn't even considered that approach, and that was just plain shameful.

* * *

The sound of rushing water filled Senka Rhodes' hotel room. It fell from the broad bath spout and pounded the slightly stained base of the tub. After a while, the running water took on a rhythm of its own, but she was certain it was only in her mind as the beat of the pouring water matched the beat of the throbbing just behind her eyes and in her left forearm and hip. It matched the beating of her heart. In the dark recesses of her mind, she wished it wasn't quite so slow. Even as she leaned down to plug up the drain, the tempo was steady. Nothing could shake it- no trick, no surprise, only extended physical exertion. On the most basic level, she felt emptiness where that factor of the unexpected had been. Her pulse had only crept up past 60 toward the end, when the sound of flesh against flesh was drowned out by focus, when everything was both slowed to a stop and accelerated to the speed of light. Adrenaline, she had found, was the body's form of alchemy- turning lead into gold, speed into strength, fear into drive. 

With an exaggerated sense of distance, she stripped naked, each layer of incriminating clothing carefully lowered into a plastic-lined trash bag. Pinkish streaks of half-dried blood skate down the sides and the black knit clothes settle into an inky black pool at the bottom. Those could have belonged to anyone. The blood could've belonged to anyone. The truth of it was some of the sanguinary DNA was hers, but only a small ratio. A quick check of the water's temperature and she planted first one foot and then the other, lowering herself into the once-pure liquid. Only submerged up to her waist, the water had turned a murky pink. Her body mimicked the trash can's scene, striped with smeared and diluted red, the remnants of a life extinguished.. erased.

Until she began to settle into the body-saturating heat she wasn't aware of the soreness and stiffness in her muscles. It was deep but it would go. By morning, it will have reached a crescendo, the aching from dull to sharp. By nightfall, it will have disappeared entirely. Closing her eyes, she sank further into the rising water, resting the nape of her neck against the cold rim of the tub. It was a startling contrast, but refreshing just the same. The silence, only cut by the now muted surge of water against water, went on for nearly forever before Rhodes extended a foot and pushed against the faucet dial, extinguishing the flow. Without the sound of the running water, the tiny hotel bathroom seemed somehow exponentially louder but it was the noise in her brain this time that was the culprit. Like Lady MacBeth, she was plagued by a bloodstain no amount of soap, white wine, or turpentine would remove. She'd already crossed the line, though, and in crossing it she discovered the line barely existed in the first place. It was as visible as tissue paper, sure. But it was as fragile as well.

She could now see herself as if floating out-of-body, an occupant of that cold and sterile room, watching the near literal scraping away of every care and inhibition she ever had. She was as bare and exposed then as she was now, knees on waxed linoleum, every gods' eye on her. Her heart was no longer on her sleeve. It was dead, as dead as her family, as dead as faith itself. It was memorialized on a typed page in a file. It was a face and a smile that no longer belonged. Her soul was gone, dishonorably discharged for a name that wasn't hers and sent to the heavens in an accidental spark. Her life was a story and a lie, but so was everyone else's. Whether they knew it or not, no one was who they thought they were. A voice in her head was constantly on loop: "There is no such thing as innocence." Everyone was guilty for something. So she was guilty of murder, but her sins were against fellow sinners. She was doing her civic and moral duty. She was saving lives and controlling chaos. She was special, maybe, but she was not innocent.

Pushing up with her legs, she righted herself, nude body sliding along the slick bathtub bottom. She reached out a hand and plucked the hotel-provided bar of soap from the dish, unwrapping it with soaked fingers. The sharp and jarring sting of soap against open, still-weeping wounds trapped her breath in her chest but it meant life. She scrubbed mercilessly at her body until her fingernails were again pristine and the edges of her cuts were pink and raw. The water, however, was clouded and tainted to opacity. She'd probably have to scrub it out. With great care, Senka climbed from the bathtub and patted herself dry, digging around in her bag for a bottle and a tube. Inside the bottle was bleach, which she poured into the bath water a moment after pulling the plug. Inside the tube was superglue, which she squeezed onto her cuts while holding the skin together. The alcohol in the glue burned for a moment, but it evaporated and dried fast. She was never without that precious glue, less painful and quicker than stitching. It was to be used whenever possible. On a base level, Senka wished that the edges of her core could be so easily patched together- that the gap in her mind that served as a stinging reminder of what was missing could be just so easily closed. She tossed the bottle into the plastic bag for disposal as well and then turned as her phone buzzed on the sink counter. It was silent and then buzzed again. Her hand shot out and she took a peek, twisting the tub faucet in order to rinse it out. The bone-deep ache in her body was silenced.

As soon as the hotel room was wiped clean and her trash disposed of, Senka was again on the road in that wouldn't be discovered stolen for at least another week. Her thanks went out to long-term airport parking.

* * *

Martin Rike closed his cell phone abruptly and clicked out of a computer window- a blinking bold database that held a name and location, the name and locations he needed, the name and locations he had passed along for months now. What it contained wasn't there for him to take or even for him to see, but it was fantastically easy for him to get. It wasn't a great feat of memory to recall and reguritate Pamela Landy's access password. Two weeks after his appointment as her unofficial watcher, he had it burned into his brain. In fact, the hardest part was to maneuver himself into a position to observe Landy and pilfer information in the first place. Once he was in, it was all far too easy. This name was number eight and after eight, he had nothing more to give. He'd have to be patient. He was very much aware Pam's next assignment required the capture of Jason Bourne. He had absolute faith that she would find him. 

Rising from his ill-gotten seat, he moved up the stairs to his room. He'd never had to worry about the assignments before. He appreciated a good, reliable weapon. Once Pamela had done her job, his only concern would be whether his weapon would jam under the greatest of pressure. All signs pointed toward success, but he knew that in the shifting underbelly of the world any prediction could just as easily have come from the blurred blue window of a Magic 8-Ball. Time was going to be the ultimate judge.


	11. Tag

_[Insert Applicable Lawsuit Dodging Disclaimer Here_

_For some reason, this chapter was incredibly hard to write. This is officially version three. I scrapped versions one and two because something (timing? setting? characterization?) was just inherently off. I thiiiiink I'm happy with this version. I'm happy enough to post it! _

_My thanks to those who have taken the time to review! Your feedback has been incredible. It makes me feel all special on the inside. Also, muchos gracias to those who are even reading this. Eleven chapters, twenty thousand words... you've stuck with me a long time! I'd bake you all cookies to nosh on during storytime if I could._

* * *

It all always seemed to shift in Naples. Bourne sat poised in front of an internet café computer in the middle of the seaside city, his fingers gliding over the keyboard. Before reacting, first he had to act and research. A quick visit to several international newspapers showed him the same thing: the radio broadcast he had heard on the drive to the Sicilian coast hadn't been as close a call as he'd first imagined. It wasn't a worst case scenario and after realizing that, the constant hum of adrenaline began to subside. Jason surfed to several other web pages and scrolled automatically but he had mainly retreated into strategy. Every news source in Western Europe seemed to essentially be running the same message. Citizens were to be on watch for "David Webb and Nicolette Parsons," and they were to report any sightings to the U.S. embassy. No part of the instructions struck him as _right._ There was no way it was an Agency bid on their head. It was too public. More than that, the embassy was to be alerted instead of the local police. Everything screamed "message" but nothing shouted it more than the use of his real name. It echoed his appearance at the Naples airport using his own passport. It was the Agency code-equivalent of standing on a bench and waving.

After a moment sitting at the desk and simply peering at the screen, Bourne began to type again. If the newscast was playing in all of Europe, was it also being broadcast in Africa? And if it was, did Nicky hear it? Jason knew her first instinct would be to pack up and run. In fact, that was exactly what he had told her to do but in this situation it had to be counter-intuitive. For once in a long time, Bourne hoped fear would paralyze her into inactivity just long enough for him to catch up. He took a breath and began typing again, peering into the reflection on the computer screen to check for any nosy bystanders that happened to be watching. He saw no one, not at this early hour. Even the clerk was half asleep, looking as though he longed for a break long enough to make a coffee run. As it was, the clerk was busy thumbing through an Italian magazine. Even the paranoia wasn't sparked by anyone nearby so Jason's attention and mode fully shifted. He knew the name Nicky was supposed to use- he had given her the name and identification. It was the least he could do, and at the time it was also the most he could do. Now it was time for him to do more.

An hour and a half of furious typing and phone calls made from a pre-paid cell he'd bought as soon as he hit land. He kept track of the minutes used in his head and by the time he'd made significant headway, he was nearly out. He'd narrowed her location down to the northwest portion of Tunisia- either the Ariana or Tunis region. Her name had popped up in a police report for a retail location as recently as two months previous. The report was mostly in Arabic with a statement made in French, but there was one thing that the English and Arabic worlds had in common and that was numbers. Jason Bourne could pick out two phone numbers easily. Picking up his phone again, he dialed the first and listened to the humming ringtone. The moment it was answered, he hung up. A man had answered and once again- while he spoke very little Arabic- he knew the word for police. The word "shorta" was uttered within two seconds and he'd hung up by the third. He didn't so much pray as mentally assert his desire as he punched in the remaining number. That assertion rose to a crescendo as he heard the ring. Three rings in and a voice answered in rapid syllables he didn't understand, but it was a woman's voice and that proved promising.

"English- do you speak English?" Bourne questioned, but the always present map in his head said it wasn't going to be quite that easy. He was answered with an inquisitive-toned Arabic retort, so he switched his game plan smoothly. "Do you understand now?" he asked in French, well aware that if he got the same confused response his options would be limited from there. Fortunately, the reply he got was instantly understood as easily as if the answer to his first question was yes.

"I understand now. How can I help?" the woman said. There was a hidden coarseness to her voice and in his head, Jason aged the woman at least twenty years Nicky's senior.

"Do you have someone there? Adrienne? She's an old friend of mine," Jason asked, careful to keep his vocabulary simple and clean. If the news had gotten there, this woman seemed to be the first one that would make the Nicolette-Adrienne connection. There was a pause. It was only the slightest pause, a moment that he might normally allow for mental translations, but it was just the tiniest bit too long. He knew a lie was about to come.

"No, no Adrienne. Just Ghada here."

"Okay," Jason responded in a tone that surpassed language boundaries. It was clear he didn't believe her, but more importantly it was clear there was more he had to say. "Ghada, I'm an old friend of yours too now. You're right to say Adrienne is not there." He was answered with a quizzical silence, which was precisely what he wanted. He knew he had her complete attention. "If Adrienne were there, I'd ask you to tell her to stay put and I'd ask you to tell her that her hair looks good." There was silence again, but it was the wrong time for quiet now. "Would you do that for an old friend?"

The line was cold and Bourne could nearly sense the indecision. The muscles in his shoulder-blades tensed and he found himself fighting the urge to hold his breath. Finally, the line went dead and he saw the blinking screen on the phone, the telltale heart of disconnection. However, he was satisfied. As he was cut off, he heard the woman's voice in the background- tiny but muttering about hair.

* * *

It had been the new addition to the shop that had caused Nicky's more-than-minor heart attack. As part of a small renovation and upgrading project, Ghada had purchased a tiny television and mounted it on the seat of a chair in the corner. It was a decent marketing strategy as far as Parsons was concerned- it would keep people in the shop longer and distract them from how much they were spending. Ghada argued it would also give them a distraction during the downtime and Nicky couldn't really refute that logic. She had been mending a torn skirt in the back room when the background noise from the showroom floor screeched into the forefront of her mind. She'd jabbed the needle right into the flesh of her thumb but a surge of panic numbed the act into oblivion. She'd heard her name- not Adrienne, but her _real _name. Shaking her hand to loose the needle, Nicky shot to the doorway by the time Ghada had taken a glance at the screen. It wasn't her own grainy face she recognized on the television first. It was Bourne's. Panning her gaze to the side, however, made her blood run cold. There she was, staring back at herself. It was an old photo, but the resemblance was unmistakable.

Oddly, Nicky found that the emotion that welled up in her soul at that moment of time was not just pure alarm but also disappointment. One of those feelings doubled as she looked to the confused, staring face of Ghada and it certainly wasn't the fear. The old lady's expression was not so much frightened or angry so much as it was sad and Parsons immediately sunk out of sight, pressing her back against the cool wall while trying to push through the mental haze. She had to think. Most of all, she had to go. Her heart pounded so loudly in her ears as she hurriedly grabbed for her purse and a scarf with which to cover her hair that she didn't hear Ghada step into the room.

"I locked up for lunch," the woman spoke quietly while closing the door to the store room.

Nicky jumped, startled, and stalled mid-motion, her eyes wide and unfocused for a moment. Sensing some fragile emotional state, Ghada clicked her tongue and bustled across, swatting matronly at Parsons' shoulder to get her to sit, shuffling to the far wall to make up some coffee. "You're in some troubles? You sit, sew. You tell me."

Parsons was suddenly very aware that her mouth was hanging wide open. She was now supposed to say something- anything, really. Anything would be better than the blank stare and finally, when Ghada had busied herself preparing coffee and a snack, Nicky felt the rush leak from her blood. She was left with the question of trust. Did she trust this woman? Nejem had given her a job and had become somewhat of a confidant. The elderly woman also had a transparent streak seemingly larger than her physical body as well, and before making a conscious decision Nicky spoke. "I lied," she said. It wasn't much of an explanation, but it was a safe one.

Ghada let out a soft laugh, shaking her head as if amused. "You lied, yes. I lie too. Those shoes you wear… they're ugly."

This time, Nicky actually felt her jaw fall and her brows shoot upward. Before she knew it, she was laughing as well. Suddenly, the world that had so quickly become a very claustrophobic place felt as though it broadened enough to allow her breath. "You were there when I bought these! Why didn't you say something then?"

Lips pursed in trivial sincerity, Nejem delivered two small cups of coffee and pastries baked fresh earlier in the morning. "Yes, yes. I was there. If you have youth and beauty, I should at least get to have the… what is it? The dress-sense?"

The corners of Nicky's mouth inexplicably turned up into a smile and she sank down into her chair, picking up the skirt from where it was flung to the floor, her fingers trailing the string of thread hanging off to find the needle. She took a moment to finish the repair and Ghada seemed content with enjoying her beverage and allow "Adrienne" to have her moment. "Adrienne isn't my real name. I'm American, not French. And… I need to leave the country," Parsons stated slowly. The last sentence seemed to have a mind of its own, with its own heaviness and reluctance. Nejem began to frown deeply but the shrill tone of the telephone broke through. It was clear Ghada was not going to answer, but Nicky gestured toward it and Nejem sighed, heaving herself from the chair she'd taken and making a rush for the phone.

She answered in an impatient surge of Arabic and Nicky couldn't help but listen in. Once again, her muscles tightened all at once when she heard her name uttered. She was at the doorway in an instant, meeting Ghada's troubled gaze. Her knuckles grew white as she gripped the doorknob. She couldn't bring herself to relax even after Nejem's expression seemed to shift from concerned to confused. Parsons was equally puzzled as Ghada hung up without again addressing the caller. "Do you have an old friend near? This man, he says stay put. He says your hair looks good. I said nothing."

Nicky's breath left her body in one big whoosh and she found herself lunging for the phone. "Did he leave a number? Did he say his name? What did he sound like? Was he American too?" Nejem intercepted with an arm around Nicky's shoulders, easing her into the back room once again. Nudging with more strength than she seemed to possess, Ghada guided Parsons back to her seat and pushed the coffee cup toward her. After a long thoughtful pause, she spoke with a weighty sort of wisdom in her voice.

"You don't go home. You don't come back here. If that was your television friend and he comes, I tell him where to go," she raised a brow in order to ensure Nicky was listening. Subconsciously, Nicky raised a brow too. "You tell me what to say, and I tell him."

Parsons took in a shuddery breath and stood again, nodding. Ghada went to the safe as Nicky re-gathered her purse. Nicky saw money in Ghada's hand- what pay she was owed- and quickly shook her head. "No, no. You keep my pay for this week, okay? I have to leave, so you keep it. If… if my friend comes, tell him I'll be at the Hotel du Parc. I'm only going to be there for the next three days, so if he shows up after that then tell him he's going to have to work harder." The two embraced- a spontaneous decision on both parts- and then Nicky slid out of the store room and out of the store to become a tourist all over again. For a heartbeat, Ghada was profoundly sad, but after that understanding took over. In three days perhaps she would contact the American authorities, but she didn't feel the propelling need to hurry any such action. She had a shop to attend to, after all.

* * *

Hair and brows dyed a spur of the moment black, Jason slipped through airport security in Naples. It was a huge risk, Bourne knew, but he'd had his ear to police scanners for twelve hours and his eyes on the tv screen. Since noon, the alert notices hadn't played. The newspapers were still in circulation, but it was evident that whoever sent the message assumed he had gotten it by now. Perhaps the cessation of alerts was part of the message as well. It was too much to assume, of course, but the possibility was there and as far as Jason could figure a lack of persistence in advertising his existence meant he retained a measure of safety and anonymity. No one stopped him in the airport. On his way out of the hotel he'd booked for only hours, Bourne had dropped an envelope off at the front desk with a polite request that it be mailed. He'd already affixed the appropriate postage. Inside he'd slipped an old inactive passport, a passport that had come to represent a certain line of communication. The name to that passport's face was Gilberto do Piento. It was addressed to the United States embassy with the CIA's Office of Public Affairs scribbled as a return address. Of course it would have Naples as the source of origin. He didn't hope to fool anyone about where he'd been. If Pamela Landy wasn't behind this apparent communication, he was leaving an obvious trail of breadcrumbs to lead right to her door.

He was sure as he boarded the plane that the intention was for him to make contact. And he had. By the time the package had reached Agency hands, he'd be well out of Italy. Yes, they'd be able to track his destination through airport security tapes, but he wasn't going to play their game. He wanted to be clear through his mode of communication that no one was holding his cards but him. He was in control of his own strings and, about as importantly, he was alone. He wouldn't be alone for long, but despite the lack of a menacing undertone to the public announcements and the deeply buried knowledge that someone's job must be hanging in the balance over that bold move, he still needed to stay at least two steps ahead of the agents. When he knew who was working the operation, his mode may change but for the moment he was opting for distraction and evasion. Webb's contributions had trickled to nothing. David had nothing to say and nothing to add.

As he stuffed himself into his allotted seat, he peered across the aisle to a woman chiding an already fussy toddler. Marie's silently speaking face hovered in front of him, replaying a statement. For a moment Bourne struggled to grasp the context, the string of memory the scene pulled at. He dug for the mental roots of the connection, but again he came up only feeling dirty and tired. It was in that exhaustion that a thought crept up into his mind. Jason still couldn't remember anything before Treadstone and with that came a white waving flag of defeat. He could denounce the name of Jason Bourne, but he was left with little else. He couldn't be David again if he couldn't even remember who the hell David was.


	12. Mr Watson, Come Here

_Hey, everybody! It's almost been a whole month since I've updated which is insane. I feel almost guilty, really. But hey, life… it's stolen me. I snuck away and sat down, determined to type up something worthwhile. Thanks to everyone once again. And an extra hello to reviewers and the people that keep coming back. Nice to see you again!_

_Bourne, Landy, and Parsons… they're not mine. But if they were, I might've gotten this chapter up sooner! They could have covered my work shifts._

* * *

Nicky was stuck in hell. It was a pretty hell with room service and a mini-bar included, but it was hell all the same. It had been two days and she hadn't gotten word from Ghada nor had she seen Bourne. As she sat facing the hotel room door, compulsively stirring her mud-thick coffee, a section of her brain sprang into life. It was a stopwatch. Two days had passed and she knew it wouldn't be safe for her to stay much longer. At the moment, there were twenty-two hours, forty-seven minutes and approximately twelve seconds before she should leave. Her bags were already packed and on the bed. For all intents and purposes, that bed was just another table. Nicky didn't dare lay down on it for fear of falling asleep. The lack of sleep had wrecked havoc on her appearance. Her eyes were an irritated red and her hair hung limply around her face. Worry had caused her to pick at her nails and now those ruined nails clutched desperately to her convenient Styrofoam cup.

She wasn't just worried anymore. She was scared. Her mind and body were in a constant adrenaline peak. Nicky couldn't shake the idea that she'd made a grave mistake. She had depended on Jason being timely and she had depended on Ghada passing along the right message. There weren't many links in the chain to safety, but anything could happen to them. In her mind, she visualized them as rusty and weather-worn, chipped at by the elements and prone to breakage at the slightest yank. How well had she really known the Tunisian woman? She'd known her for a while, but what exactly did she know? At the time, Nejem seemed trustworthy and kind. Violence of any kind was far beyond her capabilities. She had once forced Nicky to corner and catch a spider in the shop- but not kill it. No, she had released it out the front door. However, a voice in Parsons' head chimed in, betrayal wasn't a violent act. It could lead to violent acts, but betrayal in itself was just the expression of an unwanted truth.

Caught in a web of self-doubt, Nicky rose and began to pace, lifting the bitter, acrid coffee to her lips and chugging it down like a fraternity girlfriend determined to get drunk for the very first time. The coffee burned on its way down and warmed her stomach almost as if it were alcohol. She coughed, smacking her lips and peering down at the sludgy film that remained, clinging to the sides of the stark white cup like vines. She shook the cup to gather the thick liquid back at the bottom, trying to draw a breath deep enough to be calming. It was time for some assurance. Ghada had never lied to her before except for normal human matters- little white lies. In fact, Nicky watched her lie on her behalf on the phone. Parsons couldn't afford to be wrong in her judgment of the woman at this point. And as for Bourne… he should have been there by now. She was certain of it. Something terrible must have happened. Where ever he was, he must have gotten caught in the airport or train station. Maybe he was seen at a bus stop or a passing motorist called him in.

Nicky had to have faith that he was on his way, though. She didn't have a choice. She hadn't made plans beyond hiding out in the hotel for a trio of sunrises. She choked down the last of the syrupy black coffee and flung herself back into a chair, eyes fixing once again on the door as if willing it to make a noise. A tendril of self-loathing began to take rise. How could she depend so entirely on someone else once again? She'd been on her own for a while. She could do it again. Why hadn't she made a Plan B? And just how much was that mistake going to cost her? Cringing, Parsons rose and scurried to her duffel bag, yanking the zipper open and digging through her stash of clothes to find her laptop. She slid it onto the little side table and flipped it open, pressing the power button. In the anxiety-filled minutes it took for the contraption to start up, she made a return trip to the coffee maker. She grabbed out the carafe, tipping it down to funnel the liquid into her cup. How she had managed to concentrate the coffee so much was a mystery only a higher power could solve, but her hope was that with the thicker consistency came a higher caffeine content. For that, she prayed.

Shortly thereafter, she prayed that with the thicker consistency came a less likelihood of staining. That prayer was significantly more off-hand though, and it made less sense. The telephone in her room had burst into trills, startling her and causing her hand to jerk. The front of her body had a waist to toe streak of muddy brown. Nicky had no idea whether the coffee had come from her cup or from the pot, but it didn't matter. Both cup and pot were cast aside with a squeak and a clatter as she propelled her body across the space. Her hand froze above the phone, though. Fear came surging back, wiping out the primary wave of hope. If she'd had time to flip a coin, she would have. She didn't, though. Paranoia sent her flying to peek out the peephole and upon seeing nothing but the door across the hall, her hand returned to the phone. She picked it up, nearly panting from the excitement and exertion.

"Hello?" she breathed, making a weak attempt to disguise her agitation. She was answered by the dead hum of a dial tone and she could barely force herself to make the next inhalation. Suddenly, Nicky wanted to cry. She settled herself down beside a cast aside blouse on the bed and hung her head, feeling the sting in her eyes and the twitch in her chin. "Shit," she mumbled, bending forward at the waist in hopes to fend off the light-headed sensation of panic. "Shit, shit, shit—SHIT!" She jumped, once again caught off guard by the phone's ring. This time, she didn't hesitate to pick it up, pressing the receiver to her ear. "Hi, hey. Hello?"

"What took you so long? You should be used to answering phones," the voice on the other end quipped breezily, laced with a touch of relief. It was Bourne. Nicky, once again, was moments away from crying. This time, however, it was for an entirely opposite reason. She felt compelled to both strangle and hug him at once.

"Sorry. I couldn't hear the phone over the music from the party I've got going on up here," they both knew it was a lie, but it was a comforting lie. If jokes were made, then nothing could be terribly wrong. Nicky was lost, though, only taking cues from Jason's tone. His tone said her earlier panic was mostly unfounded.

"Put down your beer and get out of there. Go a block north, right along the sidewalks. There's a vendor in front of the grocery store. Get something to eat," Bourne said. It was less of an order and more of a suggestion… as much as Jason could manage to make orders sound friendly enough to be a suggestion. He walked a fine line with that statement, but Nicky detected very little stress in his voice. Again, she was reassured. She didn't have time to respond, though. As her mouth was opening, the connection was closing and she placed the phone down gently. That was the last calm thing she did for a while. As soon as the telephone clicked into its rightful place, Nicky was nothing but a flurry of hair and limbs.

* * *

"You actually think this shit is actually going to work?" Toro grumbled from his current station just on the outside of the door leading into chaos. It was controlled chaos, but chaos all the same, and- truth be told- in his opinion the only thing that came from controlled chaos was a tidy mess. His world and mind were currently full of oxymorons.

"You just have to give it some time," Landy countered, the picture of calm against Greg's tousled and grouchy countenance. "We're trying to comb the globe here, sir. We can't do that in one stroke. If they saw it, we'll know soon. If they didn't, we'll-" she didn't have time to voice her simple secondary plan to simply air the messages again with a wider audience, because from the bowels of the Agency intercom system she heard a name. Toro was being paged to the mail room. A look of annoyance passed across her face and she reached for the door in order to yank one of the agents off of computer duty but she was stopped by a defeated-looking Toro.

"I've got it. I need a break," he sighed and disappeared down the corridor for the set of security doors and eventually the elevator. Pamela frowned. She hated to see that expression on his face… defeat. It wasn't something she was used to. She didn't fail. It was not part of her life, job, or upbringing. She was surprised to find herself a bit disappointed but it only took half an instance of thought to realize its source. She'd come to consider Greg her political equal. He drove a hard argument and he was bright, but at the moment he was beaten and she wondered if she overestimated herself.

Young Agent Waynesboro was her savior from a good five minutes of introspection. The woman's upper body popped out from behind a suddenly opened door, her eyes alight with something in the excitement category. Pam felt her eyebrows lift upward, but spoke nothing. "One of the Blackbriar ops just coded in," Kelly spilled in a breath.

"Who?" Landy asked, though her tone indicated more of a demand. She demanded to know who.

"Victor Travis," the agent replied with a slight impatient bounce. "Paz. Hurry up. He says you've got twenty seconds to get on the line or he's hanging up."

Pamela pushed her way past the girl perhaps a touch too forcefully and strolled to the telephone in the furthest corner. She didn't need to silence the room. They had already ground to a dead halt, all eyes on her. Landy waved the attention away and pick up the handheld, taking the phone off of speaker. She knew Paz could tell the difference and she hoped he would appreciate it. "Landy here. I just need to do a quick identity check. You know the drill." Pam pointed toward someone to the left and as expected, the man's profile and information popped up on the giant monitor behind her.

"Tango-tango-sierra, three-four-nine," the male voice on the other end responded. TTS-349. Landy turned her head, straining a muscle to check that it matched the identification code on his chart. Somehow Landy both tensed and relaxed at once.

"This phone line's secure. Listen to me. We need to know-"

She was cut off abruptly. "The phone line's secure? This phone line had better be secure or I am personally dragging you down with me. What in the hell are you people doing over there? Blackbriar was _burned_. Did you rebuild it? Are you ordering the hits?"

"I'm not ordering any hits," Landy managed to slip in, using her most calm and conversational tone available. "This conversation's going to be pointless if you don't give me a chance to talk."

"I'm on a prepaid," Paz cut in once again. Pam didn't let the trickle of annoyance in no matter how hard it clawed at her subconscious.

"I'm not tracing it." She allowed a beat of silence to pass and when the man didn't have anything to counter her comment, she plowed onward. "There's no new Blackbriar. No one rebuilt it, and I'm not ordering any hi-"

"Stop saying that. Black ops agents are dropping like flies. I'm off the goddamn grid, but I'm not blind. Half a damn dozen, right? All fucking 'suicides?'" The quotation marks were very clear in Paz's tone through a mix of sarcasm and aggression.

"I'll stop saying that when it stops being true. I'm not ordering any hits. And, I'm sorry, but there are more than six dead. It's seven now. We need to figure out how to keep you safe. The first thing I think we need to do is bring you in."

"I'm not coming in," Paz spat. Landy was experienced working with the cool and logical side of rogue agents, the side that responded to reason and shunned emotion. Paz, however, was clearly upset. The records of actual agent training were dusty and vague, but the only thing Pamela could deduce was that the conditioning was wearing off. Or perhaps the Blackbriar troops were trained differently than Treadstone. Landy made a mental note to set a duo of employees on an archaeological excavation of Albert Hirsch's personal belongings and all Agency archives.

"I don't know how to protect you if I don't even know where you are," Pam stated simply, holding back a sigh that desperately wanted to escape.

"You don't think I can protect myself?" he grumbled. She could hear the distinct sound of a forceful click in the background and she registered the noise as the sound of a gun being loaded. The last thing Landy needed was another number added to the current body count. She knew she had to handle the situation just the right way, say the right thing, and so she took the necessary moment to think.

"You don't think you can protect yourself," Pam finally said, quieting her voice and adding in a gentle and almost maternal aspect. "People you trained with are dead and now you're worried you can't protect yourself either." She paused again, this time for dramatic effect. She already knew the words she was going to speak next. "You don't have to come in, but you need to know that I'm on your side here. None of you need to die. There's no reason for it. I'm in the same boat you are. We both got left back when the shit hit the fan, and I'm not the type to leave a man behind. I just need to know where you are, so I can-"

"I lied. This isn't a prepaid. Do your thing," Paz interrupted. There was a short bout of silence and then a dial tone buzzed in Landy's ear. She set the phone down and peered out at the sea of eager faces.

"Run the number and get me the address. Then I need-" again, Pamela was spoken over. She was growing tired of it, but as she looked across to the source of the commotion she stood up very slowly. Greg Toro stood in the doorway, his cheeks ruddy and his breath quickened with either fear or exhilaration. He held a plain package in his hand, ripped open but clutched as though it was a map to the Holy Grail.

"You need to see this," Toro huffed, thrusting the envelope out at her. With an authoritative glance over the other employees, she sighed and then gestured for them to carry on as she crossed the room to Greg. She plucked the envelope from his hand and squeezed the edges to open it, peeking inside. Her brows furrowed as she tipped the thing, staring at the passport that fell into her hand. As if stricken with a temporary bout of psychic ability, Landy knew the face she was going to see when she opened it, but she opened it still. She only looked for a fraction of a second and then whispered to Greg.

"Not a word of this to anyone, and you'd better play along" she hissed and then lifted her tone. It morphed and shifted to irritation. "Christ, Greg! Jason Bourne's not going to write us a goddamn letter. Look, you moron: 'Bourne' isn't even spelled right. Stop bringing me every pathetic piece of tabloid trash that pours in, got it?"

Greg didn't have to do much acting to look stunned and humiliated. He nodded quickly and after nearly a minute of awkward tension, the sound of the agents working behind them slowly built to its normal cadence. With her back still turned to everyone but Toro, Landy gave a very satisfied smile. It was always the small victories that seemed to mean the most.


	13. Hemmorhage

_Most of the characters in this chapter are actually mine, with the exception of Landy and Paz. As a whole... I really don't own many of them. But I just had Toro get me coffee- he skimps on the sugar._

_Hey, I managed to update sooner than I did last time! Thanks again to reviewers and everyone. I kind of want to call this a filler chapter, but it's really not. It's important! Just no Nicky or Bourne. Nicky and Bourne next update, I promise!_

* * *

Senka was resting. Her injuries from her last assignment had time to heal. Her muscles continued to ache, but that was to be expected. If her body didn't protest when she changed positions, it meant she hadn't been active enough. She was currently holed up in an Atlanta no-tell motel, relaxing on the ultra-firm bed on top of questionably stained sheets. The quality- or lack thereof- of her hotel accommodations didn't bother her. She'd chosen them, in fact. Places that charged by the hour never asked questions, especially if you paid well in advance with large sums of cash, and she'd been careful to ensure that the few prostitutes she saw around were actually prostitutes and not vice-division lure for the lonely man.

There was no silence where she lay. The walls were paper thin and in her mind's eye she could see her hand pushing right through if she used one for leverage. From the room to her right she could hear the loud and primal sounds of sex. From the room to her right she could hear the loud and primal sounds of a fight. If it weren't for the precise timing of the divine exclamations and the pitch of the screams, the two would have been indistinguishable from one another. It didn't bother her, though. Silence or no silence, she was caught in a moment of limbo. She was ordered to remain in this holding pattern until ordered otherwise. She wasn't aware there was supposed to be downtime, and she didn't exactly know what to do with herself.

She was certain she got at least three channels on the television, but watching tv seemed pointless at the moment. It didn't seem to serve a purpose. On one level, Senka knew this should not be such an issue. She should easily be able to pick up a book or fill up the bathtub without an ulterior motive. She should be able to sit in a movie theater and watch a film without something else to watch. In fact, she remembered a time where she did just that. It wasn't a strong memory and the memories didn't seem to matter too much, but lying on her back, feeling a broken spring poking against her kidney, she remembered sitting in a locker room, lacing up a pair of tennis shoes and laughing about something. The subject of the joke wasn't important anymore and neither was the memory, so it struck her as odd before she ultimately dismissed it.

What went on in her mind was as simple a process as it could be. What happened now was important and what happened tomorrow was important but everything that's passed was irrelevant. She knew about it and she recognized it but with the same amount of concern and interest one would normally put into the number of grains of sugar in their morning coffee- it affected the outcome but only gross differences from the norm would cause a problem. As far as she knew, her morning coffee had always been pleasantly mundane. Yes, she was a killer. Yes, she had many names. Yes, she was alone in a seedy motel room waiting for the next face and location to meet. But to think beyond that was literally unthinkable. She vaguely recalled attempting once, but upon considering that single occasion a dull roar began behind her eyes. It thudded the slow rhythm of her pulse, surged, threatening to further crest.

Senka rolled to grope for a bottle of aspirin but her cellphone chirped. Instantly, the pain vanished and she was focused. Her hand grabbed the device and she took a peek, her body rising in a fluid motion to gather up her things and make a hasty exit.

The apartment complex she was called to was a disaster just waiting to be condemned. Floorboards creaked and water leaked. In rainstorms, it beaded up between the seams in the wallpaper and left stained and peeling evidence long after it dried. It was only two stories, and but a single light was on in the whole place. Through the threadbare curtains lay a sleeping form, the light from the television illuminating little, mainly suiting only to create more shadow. Senka was crouched beneath the windowsill. Earlier in the day she had scouted the area and formulated a plan, but now her plan felt wrong. Something about the situation felt wrong. She could see through the curtains, but she couldn't see well enough. There was light in the room but there wasn't enough. An alarm sounded in the deep recesses of her mind, declaring this a set-up.

Senka slunk along the ground and circled to the back entrance, attempting to open the door but instantly finding it locked. She reached into her pocket to pull out two thin metal hooks to pick it, but she stopped. She sunk down to kneel to eye-level and saw the tiniest sliver of brass through ten years of grime. Someone had picked the lock recently, and with some very practical tools. After half a second of consideration, again she changed her mind and moved very casually toward the front door. She stopped by a garbage bin and dug around, fishing out a half-torn and very smelly sweater which she slid on, tangling up her hair effectively. The smell didn't bother her. It might later, but for the moment it didn't.

The reached the front door and thankfully found it unlocked. It took a good amount of jiggling but it opened. She stepped in with a dreamy swagger, sniffling and dragging her feet. She'd planned on a silent approach, but the scene felt dangerous in a way she had yet to experience. Since she didn't exist, she thought perhaps she should try a new approach and be obvious… obvious and a rather good imitation of inebriated. She stumbled into the dark hallway and began to fuss around with each and every doorknob, finding every single one locked until she finally reached the room she knew would be lit. She could see the tendrils of light snake out from beneath the door and turned the handle. As expected, it was unlocked and she opened it, stumbling inside.

She moved inside and the hairs on the back of her neck instantly stood on end. She fought the urge to reach for her gun and strangely felt no panic when a forearm crossed her throat and a body pressed against her back. She hadn't heard the footsteps, but the form on the bed was crafted from pillows. This was a trap, and she walked into it, but she walked into it on her terms. And despite her lithe body being positioned precisely at the core of the trap, she wasn't the one whose heart was beating uncontrollably. It was her assailant's. She could feel it, hear his struggle to conceal his speeded breathing.

"Sammy," she slurred, swinging her head to try and take a look at her attacker's face. "I-I'm sorry, okay. 'Kay? I only got like three hundred. Only three hundred but I can do better to-"

The pressure against her trachea raised and the heat of a body pushed away. Senka turned and stared into the face of Paz, his cheeks ruddy with paranoia and adrenaline. The barrel of a gun was aimed directly at her face. She held her hands up and took a step away, shaking her head a couple of times. "I'm… wait, I'm… sorry. I didn't try to… is this your place? I…" Senka even managed a couple of tears, before she sprang like the coiled muscle of an angry snake. The heroin swagger fell away instantly and her thumb wedged between the trigger and the back of Paz's gun, preventing him from shooting it. That was her first concern.

Paz tried to fire, grappling fiercely. Arms and legs met other arms and legs and the preoccupation of both fighters with the gun was a handicap to them both. Senka could feel the bone in her thumb strain from repeated ramming, and Paz probably could too. She wasn't above fighting dirty. Seeing a gap in his defense- his legs specifically- she thrust a knee into Paz's groin. He grunted and wheezed but fought the urge to double over. Senka freed a hand to reach for her own gun and fired off a shot.

* * *

Just a passport. It was just a passport, and it sat in front of Pamela Landy while she ruminated at her desk. She'd escaped from the humming buzz of the work room for thirty minutes or so in an attempt to work out the code within the message, but it hadn't been as fruitful as she'd hoped. She'd scoured the envelope and the passport itself and came up with nothing that wasn't blatantly obvious. The message was only that Jason Bourne was sending a message. He'd heard hers and he would make contact if and when he felt like it. The package came from Italy, which meant that Bourne was almost one hundred percent not in Italy. That left hundreds of other countries he could be in. The exclusion of Italy wasn't comforting in the least. With a slight hint of dismay, Pam realized she was upset not just because she was under a professional time crunch but because she had the feeling there were agents out there in grave danger.

No, Landy couldn't fool herself. It was the thought that Bourne and Parsons were in mortal danger that nagged at her conscious. This was, after all, in some small part her fault. They'd all made their own choices, but once again they were on the run and she was sitting in Operation Central. After taking a deep breath and stretching her neck from side to side, feeling the cool and logical calm fall over her mind once again, Landy picked up the passport. She wondered if Bourne was keeping an eye on Italian media for a response and if so, what type of response should she send. She couldn't risk using the Giberto alias again. This would be twice; three times would be too much.

A knock on the door gradually drew her attention away from the passport. She picked the document up off of the desk and slid it quietly into her desk, picking up her coffee cup and holding it just below her mouth as she spoke. "Come in."

The robotically glowering face of Martin Rike appeared in her doorway. After a moment's examination, Landy detected the slightest hint of annoyance in his face. "I'd really appreciate an update on this project, Landy," Martin chimed in, his stance set wide in a nonverbal indication that he had no intention of leaving the office before being satisfied. Before he was finished with his demand, Pam already knew he would indeed leave gravely dissatisfied.

"What project, Martin?" Pamela calmly took a sip of her coffee with a lofty tone of curiosity that bordered on taunting.

"This inside project. I was appointed as not only your assistant but also your watcher and you're purposefully excluding me from your work."

Like many times before, something about Rike's demeanor bothered her. It wasn't just sheer arrogance and egotism- she dealt with that on an hourly basis. It was something more. Only now pieces were beginning to fall into place in the back of her mind, creating the edges of a puzzle she was familiar with. It was something intangible, something she couldn't touch and possibly couldn't prove, but if she worked on a singly material level then she would still be down with the agents monitoring pointless phone calls and credit card transactions. Slowly, she began to speak again. "Toro appointed you, but he didn't invite you in on our meeting. I think that means you're officially off of the case. If you've got a problem with it, I'm sure he'd be more than happy to discuss it with y-"

"You're not going to pawn me off on him. I know you're planning something you're not including even him in. If you send me to him, I will inform him of such."

For a moment, it was an old fashioned staring contest, but then an essential piece of Landy's mental puzzle snapped into place. Martin Rike was trying to manipulate her. No, not just manipulate her. Manipulation was commonplace in Agency bureaucracy; this was worse. This was panning out to be pure blackmail and it certainly didn't paint Rike into a very pretty picture. Instantly, Pamela felt the muscles lining her spine clench and tighten like steel. "You'll inform him of what exactly? That I have an intelligence of my own? I'm certain he's well aware of that fact by now."

"Yes, but I doubt he'd be too happy if he knew your intelligence was in opposition to his," Rike responded, loosely clasping his hands behind his back. He stood like he was once a soldier, but Landy was aware of no such background. Warning flares now continually went up in her mind.

"So you'd be willing to lie to him? To what end, Martin? The prestige of a clean-up job?"

Martin's expression was frozen in place and he shook his head once slowly. "It's about the principle, Landy. But I've gotten your answer." With a scowl, Rike departed, making sure to slam the door behind himself.

Landy let out a breath but was only given enough time for that before her phone sprang to life. It was Toro. She answered with cool, collected "Yes?" and her face fell into a frown. She pushed away from her desk and immediately began to fly down the hallway. "I'm on my way. Send everybody else out on break."


	14. Seeing Red

_Disclaimer: Most of the characters in this story do not belong to me! I'm not profiting from them, swearsies._

_Thanks for the reviews again! I like 'em. I really like 'em. So if you have something to say, I want to hear it! Or... well, read it. Close enough. _

* * *

"Say something," Nicky pleaded from her spot on the bed in their tiny hotel room in Alexandria. They'd reached Egypt the day before and had mainly been in hiding since. Tiny traces of Jason's light heartedness had faded with every mile they drove and they seemed to disappear entirely the moment the door to the hotel had swung shut. Nicky had attempted to keep up with his tense sitting for several hours but eventually gave up and shed her shoes, collapsing unceremoniously onto the bed, on her side and propped up by every pillow available. She wanted so very badly to sleep. Bourne's presence made her comfortable enough to easily sink into slumber but there was something about the troubled expression on his face that said that would be against some kind of fleeing etiquette. Perhaps "No sleeping on the run" was a rule she was unaware of.

"Huhn," Jason grunted in brief response. He said something in a way. It wasn't an actual word, but he opened his mouth and a syllable came out, and for the moment that was going to have to satisfy Nicky's need for companionship. The human side of him had been shoved into the shadows. David had willingly stepped away. The veiled messages that threatened his anonymity and yet nothing else were out of David's league. This was Bourne's territory and Jason was very busy, mentally mapping out a plan. He didn't have much to work with. He'd collected an impressive bounty of American newspapers from a novel "American" shop in the downtown district that sported a collection of flags and watery coffee. Much to his surprise, the owners were earnest in their passion rather than indulging in some form of Middle Eastern mockery of the American culture.

After scouring the newspapers and coming up empty, thus being thrown right back to where he was at the beginning, Jason had sunk deep into his current mode of contemplation. He wasn't blind to human reactions and he certainly wasn't blind to Nicky's reactions. He was very aware that his demeanor was making her quite uncomfortable. He could see his own face in his mind's eye- gaze distant, posture tense, expression cold. However, he couldn't prioritize comforting her at the moment. Pulling himself from his mind to give her a hug she very well may not- and quite possibly should not- believe would be useless to them both and surely if anyone understood, it would be Nicky. She'd seen him kill. Watching him sit and think for hours on end should at worst be uninteresting.

His plan for simply making contact to inform Pam he'd intercepted her message wasn't going to be enough, he'd finally decided. It wasn't an instantaneous decision, nor was it easy. If anyone was going to drag him down, it would be her. If anyone was going to put a bullet in his head, it would be her. The benign "hello" could certainly be a ruse to pull him in under false pretenses, but a large section of Bourne's mind- the section he trusted most- said that he and she had an unspoken bond. There would be no underhanded games between them. Their game, if there was to be one, was to be a form of life sized chess- all above the board, all in plain sight, all a matter of wit against wit. May the best man win.

With a great deal of reluctance, Bourne realized he was going to have to make the call.

* * *

Pamela Landy could barely keep herself from slamming the tip of her ballpoint pen through the pad of paper in her lap. She couldn't imagine how Toro, with his slightly less contained self-restraint, wasn't himself in need of urgent medical attention. She knew he was covering a half angered and half panicked flushed with a constant ingestion of straight black coffee from his station in the corner of a pristine, isolated hospital room. Monitors beeped rhythmically at a pace far slower than the one Landy felt pulsing through her own veins. She felt time slipping away and this silence was frustrating. There was no need and no point. There was no reason for it except for defiance and it was that defiance that was creating the palpable tension in the air.

Paz was the central object of attention, face bruised and puffy, stitched and glued in some places. The most serious of injuries were beneath the blanket, two gunshot wounds that should have left him dead. One grazed his aorta while the other severed his femoral artery. In saving his own life, he had been forced to sacrifice a leg and the space where that leg had been was eerily empty on the bed. In one hand, Paz gripped the blanket and in the other he held a gun, poised to shoot at any and everyone at will. The situation had been far more heated upon Landy and Toro's entry, but it had been giving him the gun and giving him the control that had ultimately brought them to this point of high-strung balance. Something had to give. He had to speak, and not just to hurl insults and objects. As long as he was quiet, however, they would remain quiet. Greg began to speak twice but a well-directed glare from Pam stopped him instantly.

It was quite close to an hour before Paz began to talk. His voice was low and hoarse, just barely shuddering with the control he was so obviously using in order not to scream or possibly cry. He had, after all, traded the use of painkillers for absolute consciousness at the surprise of no one. "Female, late teens to early twenties, five-five to five-seven. Athletic build, brown hair, blue eyes. Fair skin tone, Western European descent. No accent. No distinguishing marks," the description was rattled off rapidly and Landy scribbled in shorthand in order to keep up.

"You can narrow down that description," she replied and her tone insisted it wasn't a question but a statement.

Fingering the trigger of the gun, Paz's jaw worked and he cleared his throat gently. "Female. Nineteen or twenty. Five-six and a half. Athletic build… can probably run a five minute mile, easy. Military training, martial arts training. She had a sore left hamstring," he spoke slower this time as if the words were more reluctant to come out. The more he said, the more hesitant he was to say it. "She had to be one of us. I never saw her before and she's… she's young and… female. But she had to be. One of us or counter-intelligence using our training. Something. I got three rounds fired. I think one might've landed."

Landy continued writing in her own form of shorthand, something only she would probably be able to decipher later and translate into typed and shared notes. She stopped immediately when something he said triggered her full attention, however. "How do you know she's had your training? Technique? Weaponry?"

"Technique, yeah. Technique, but there was the look. Lights on, but nobody's home. The robotic predator look…"

"I'm going to check local hospitals for gunshot wounds. Would you be able to recognize her if you saw her again?" Landy was already starting to rise from her seat. Her heart had dropped out from her body and the suspicious stirrings in the back of her mind had spiked to a peak. She caught a glimpse of Toro who had frozen in place, half hidden behind his Styrofoam cup.

Paz shook his head, but not to her question. "I'd recognize her, but she's not going to show face in a hospital. The only way I'm ever going to see her again is in a body bag," it wasn't a threat but a statement. The first thing Pamela had done in getting the phone call from Paz was to disband the search team. The second was to issue everything necessary to declare Paz dead. She was personally handling the process of finding him a new identity, but she had plenty of time. This military hospital would be his home for a while.

Everyone except Toro was under the impression Paz was dead. It would be easy to sniff out the leak if he ended up double dead now. If not, she now had a room full of people she needed to outwit and outsmart. She had made Paz's location public knowledge among her employees and he had been attacked, despite his own trap. In fact, his own trap was possibly the reason he lived at all. Someone in her team had spilled the address to the assassin or the handler and now she had another job- finding the mole in her little operation. As if she didn't have enough on her plate.

Landy gathered up her things and moved toward the door, gesturing Toro along like her obedient pet. "I'm going to check it out anyway. Get some rest and call if you need anything." She waited for a response but heard and saw none, so without another word she and Greg departed.

* * *

Quick, Lamaze-style breathing issued from the floor of the bathroom of an upscale hotel ten miles from the ratty apartment complex. Senka sat, propped up against the cabinets, digging deep into her stomach just below her ribs first with a pair of alcohol-doused tweezers and finally her fingers. The neat little hole near the fleshy ridge of her side quickly became a ragged mess and just as she hooked her fingertips around the smooth bullet, warmed by her body and slick with her blood, her cell phone started to ring. With a steady hand, she pulled the bullet out and dropped it down onto once pristine tile, letting out a half-choked breath. By the third ring, she answered the phone, hitting the speaker function in order to press pads of thready gauze against the bubbling wound.

"Mission status," the cool baritone voice demanded.

Senka risked the second she needed to catch her breath in order to sound as collected as possible. "Success," but there was a pause as she checked to see if the bleeding was active or just left over from nearly an hour of fussing with the wound, "I think."

The silence on the other end of the line lasted only a fraction of a second but it was cold enough to freeze any blood in its place. "Explain."

"It was a trap, sir," she said, pressing the gauze back into place. Senka rested her head against the counter, going through a series of mental curses. "The address- it was a set up. He was waiting for me. I got off two lethal hits and I got out of there before I could be the one terminated."

This time, there was no pause. "Are you wounded?"

"Yes. It's not severe. A few sutures, good as new," a third peek at the hole in her flesh told Senka that was in fact the truth. The bleeding had all but stopped and while she didn't have any medical monitoring equipment she could tell her blood pressure hadn't plummeted in any way that indicated the bullet ricocheted off an internal organ.

"You have the antibiotics. Take three. Now," the voice from the phone commanded. Senka cringed and looked over at her gear bag across the way.

"I need to stitch up first," she protested.

Before she could even finish with her argument, the man spoke up again. "Take the antibiotics now. Start off with four now, three in the morning. You're too vulnerable if you get an infection."

Deflated, too physically and mentally tired to insist otherwise, Senka crawled with one hand across to dig out the hefty bottle from her bag, rattling out a quadruple dose of pills and dry swallowing them as told. The movement caused her gunshot wound to begin weeping an angry red and she returned to her place by the sink slower than she departed. She took a sip of water, mouth almost instantly dry. "Yes, sir."

There were seconds of radio silence which gave Senka time to clean up the fresh blood. She didn't know why she bothered to argue about the pills anyway, now that she thought about it. She always ended up taking them and he always ended up right- never once had she ended up with some raging, debilitating infection. Come to think of it, why did she question him about anything at all? Not just the pills, but anything. Everything. He knew what was best, and he was her superior. She should obey without question, because he had never been wrong. Paz's trap was just a fluke and it was a lesson well-learned. It took her a long while to tune back into what was happening and when she did, she didn't know how much time had passed. She was midway through suturing her side closed and her handler was mid-sentence. She didn't know what he had said but it didn't seem important. She didn't feel like she was supposed to know. She already knew what she had to, and that was it.

With a clenched jaw, Senka shoved the sharp needle through both sides of her flesh and looped the thread around, snipping off the ends and finally patting the area dry. "-send someone to clean up if the mission failed. They'll be looking for you. You need to keep your nose down for now, wait for the dust to clear. I'll be in touch. You've got unofficial downtime until then, but don't get lazy," the man demanded in the same low key chilly tone as before.

The line went dead and Senka reached out to snap the phone closed. She was filled with a sense of… nothing. She felt nothing. And she thought nothing of it. Automatically, she cut a perfect square of gauze and taped it to cover the stitches then rose. Before retiring for any rest at all, she scrubbed that bathroom clean, ridding it of any sign of blood and perfecting the art of walking normally by ignoring the pain and stiffness of a wounded side.


	15. Fever

_Disclaimer: I only own Rike, Senka, and Toro. Everyone else is somebody else's but everyone else's to love! (It's poetic. Admit it.)_

_Thanks to everyone who stopped by to read, and thanks to everyone who's stopping by to read again! If this is your first time, hi! Hello! How's it going? You don't know this, but it's been a while since I've updated and I feel pretty bad about that. I've just been working nonstop and the creative juices, they froze. So I hope this doesn't suck too much. _

* * *

Sirens rang loud. Thousand of sirens echoed in his ears. No, that was an exaggeration. It was dozens of sirens, but processed through his brain, bounced within the confines of his skull, and shuffled through the racing pace of thought, the dozens turned to thousands. Red, blue, and white lights danced across the landscape. They reflected off of trees and vehicles, off of faces and frowns. Jason… _David _could feel fingertips dig into his arms. He could feel bodyweight countering his. He could feel the unreasonable urge to plow forward past the wall of bodies to get to whatever scene was in front of him. He couldn't see it, and it was because of this sensory lack that he realized he was dreaming. He could only feel it, and it was hot. Internally, panic and rage and a twisting vortex of helplessness bubbled of from the depth of his being. It came from a place he didn't know he had and- in a glimmer of lucidity- he wasn't sure actually existed. It was so strong and so immediate; it defied all sense and logic. This unseen terror was dangerous and yet he needed to _go_. He needed to go straight to it. Externally, the heat was real and not just a jumble of now foreign emotions. From his restrained distance, he could feel his skin redden. Sweat trickled down his neck and soaked his clothes. His skin stung as if the tiny hairs themselves were in danger of scorching and yet he couldn't dispute his compelling need to cut down anyone between him and his destination. There was yelling. He, himself, was yelling. The words coming from his own mouth were incomprehensible either through the distance of dreaming or because he was incapable of coherent speech, but the raw and scratchy feel to his throat said he had begun screaming long before and would continue long after. It was nothing but noise, heat, and a useless struggle to go no where. If David believed in Hell, he would have believed he had found it.

It wasn't screaming or heat that finally woke Jason up, but it was noise and a manner of jostling. Nicky stood above him, several paces back, one arm extended out at its fullest length to poke at his shoulder. If at all possible, she wanted to avoid a chokehold. From the muttering and thrashing that had started with a grunt, Nicky know whatever was going on in Jason's head was unpleasant. Parsons didn't misjudge. Jason was awake in fractions of a second and his body picked up where his mind had left off. He flew from the chair where he had finally, after three days of forced insomnia, had succumb to the cradling grip of sleep. This sleep had been less than restless.

Bourne was halfway across the room before his mind caught up with his new status of awakening. He skidded to a stop, hand gripping the alarm clock he had yanked from the wall. Turning, he stared wide-eyed and disheveled at Nicky, panting and sweating as though he had just finished a marathon. His clothes were soaked and his pulse was racing. Nicky's pulse was skipping along just the same. She had never before seen him in such a state of panic. The closest he had ever come, he had been pointing a gun at her head but even then there was a certain air of calm and strategy about him. This was impossibly scarier. Bourne looked like a spooked, confused animal. It was an unpredictable level of fear.

"Jason! It's me. Nicky. You were having a dream, a bad dream… it's okay now. You're awake. Here…" she held out a dampened facecloth, brows knit with concern.

It took nearly an entire minute before Jason's muscles started to unravel, un-tense. The first thing he did was sheepishly return the alarm clock to the nightstand and give the wall socket a cursory glance in hopes that he didn't do any damage to the sheetrock in his haste to remove it. The prongs themselves were bent but he considered that a minor loss. The bigger loss, he felt, was this momentary loss of control due to what? A dream? He'd had dreams before, dreams that meant little to him, dreams that left him confused and disoriented. With a quiet clearing of his throat, he moved forward and took the towel from Nicky. It was the farthest thing from his mind, but he was vaguely aware that it may ease Parson's mind. It certainly wouldn't hurt to begin to wipe away the physical remnants of the nightmare.

"I'm fine. You're right… it was a bad dream. Awake now," Bourne grumbled in a voice that was hoarse and graveling. He wondered if he really had been screaming. His gaze centered on Nicky's face. He saw her clenched jaw, hunched body. He saw her tensed to lunge for any open doorway at the slightest threat and suddenly he felt obligated to diffuse a situation that logically he shouldn't feel guilty for causing. He forced his expression to soften and while he didn't feel any less edgy, he slowly adjusted his posture- he dropped his shoulders, shifted his hips, and bent a knee. His body deflated while his mind continued to spin out of control. "Nicky, it's fine. Are you okay? I'm sorry I woke you up." He took a step toward her and when she didn't jerk away from the approach he crossed the rest of the way, managing a calm smile for her behalf. "Hey, why don't you go lay down? I'll go get us both some tea."

He led her by the hand back to the bed and waited until she got settled. Nicky was still spooked not just by the fear she'd seen on Bourne's face but also by how quickly he had been able to make it vanish. She did her best to perform the same trick- covering up unease with a mask of calm as she slid back under the covers and closed her eyes. She waited until Jason left the room before opening her eyes again and just stared as the closed door. Even still, her heart beat out a half-panicked rhythm.

* * *

Pamela Landy was still within her two weeks' timeframe. She still had access to every gear and gadget the CIA had and she was going to use them. At the moment, she was stationed in her office, hunched over a laptop. In one ear was a tiny wedge of plastic feeding her audio from the work room. Toro's voice boomed in the strongest and beyond that was a cacophony of smaller, younger voices- an orchestra of confusion and concern. On her laptop Pam could see the room from a bird's eye view, a tiny camera installed in a topmost corner. Once in a while someone would look in the camera's direction but she was almost entirely certain no one had discovered it. It was so small, so hidden, and there was more pressing chaos to pay attention to than a speck on the wall.

"We've got confirmation from the coroner," Toro spoke, but he was drowned out by the voices. The triplicate clearing of his throat silenced the noise but Pam could hear the tension. "We have confirmation. The body at the hotel was Paz. The scene's been swept, but there's bad news. It was Bourne. There was a partial found on a lamp at the scene and it matches the prints in our database. We've got to get him, guys and girls. All eyes and ears back in the States. Lock down airports, train stations, bus routes. Send his name and face to every police station in the country. We were wrong. He's still here, and he's pissed."

There was a moment of patent stillness. A hush of disbelief lingered over the room but Toro's glare finally penetrated the bunch. One by one they began to work, spring to action like good information soldiers. Toro filed out as the last person, wide-eyed Waynesboro, slid her chair back up to her computer console, fingers clicking in her user ID and password. The doors shut behind Greg and he began the long stroll to Pam's office, ripping the tiny microphone from the inside of his collar as soon as he was out of sight.

Gregory was huffing, puffing, and flushed by the time he reached Landy's door. He didn't bother to knock. He simply entered with an abruptness that was meant to cause her alarm. Instead Pam was in the midst of carefully nestling her earpiece into its case. She looked up with a faint yet placid smile. "Good work," she said, managing just the right amount of condescension. It was enough to satisfy her base need to use such petty tones but not enough to make the need obvious.

"We're just undermining ourselves, Pam!" Toro fumed, inviting himself to a seat across from her desk as well as half of the sandwich she had planned on eating for lunch.

"That's the point. Someone inside that room isn't on our side. They're feeding information to outsiders, so if they're going to be feeding information it might as well be wrong."

"And just why in the hell couldn't you be the one to talk to the drooling wolfpack?" Toro snarled as he chomped off half of the sandwich, deflating in his seat with a sigh.

"I've been on Bourne's side from day one. Now it looks like you've taken control from me, or at the very least you're issuing orders without me. Dissention in the ranks?… It's more misinformation."

"You don't play fair," Greg grumbled, tearing off another chunk of sandwich for rapid consumption.

Landy very nearly snorted. It was all she could do to keep from laughing outright. "You can't play fair. Not here."

* * *

From his pristine apartment, rented under an assumed name, Martin Rike was watching a grainy replica of the chaos and calamity that unfolded at Hub Headquarters. His hacking techniques weren't the best, but he had managed to tap into the video and audio stream coming from the room. He wasn't able to intercept them complete, stop them from linking from Toro to Landy. That would have been satisfying on a personal level but it would have also alerted them to a problem. He had simply been able to dip a toe into the waters and catch a glimpse. His brows instantly shot upwards when the choppy audio came in- delayed, but clear enough.

Bourne? They were blaming it on Jason Bourne. Clever, yes, but it had already been done. Not only that, but nothing of that plan been relayed to him. In fact the opposite was true. All plans were forcibly abandoned when Senka found herself trapped. No, now everything said had to be questioned. If they were indeed setting a nationwide dragnet for Bourne, all the better, but he couldn't bet on it. This was staged and he knew just who to blame for it. Landy… if it weren't for her vanity- her need to watch her own play performed- he might have bought her feigned ignorance for just a while. It didn't matter in the long run. He'd get what he needed before she knew she lost it, and then he'd get rid of her.


	16. Plain Sight

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Disclaimer: Jason Bourne/David Webb/Pamela Landy are not my property and if I thought I could make some money from them... uh... I wouldn't be writing fan fiction

_Okay! Hi! I can't believe I've made it this far. Over 30,000 words, over 15 chapters. I can't believe my own attention span's held up so far so let me give you all a HUGE thank you. If I'm shocked my own attention span's held up, I'm astounded yours has. Thank you for reading, thank you for reviewing, thank you for everything. I love hearing back from you all. It gives me tinglies. Enjoy_

* * *

Senka couldn't sleep. Insomnia had often plagued her in the previous months, but it had never been so bad that she couldn't simply will herself off to the land of nod. Now she was up and fully alert. Weariness was heavy on her eyelids, tugging at her mind but refusing to silence the full inner monologue that plowed mercilessly through her psyche. Something was wrong. A memory chimed from a far corner of her brain, so far in the distance that she would have guessed it was from earliest childhood at first, but a moments' probing proved her wrong. No, she was older than that. She recalled the same sense of inherent discord the night she was torn from her routine life at West Point and the fact that she had to fumble so feverishly to grasp onto the recollection- even just for a moment- disturbed her more than the feeling of unease ever could. How could she ever forget that? On one hand it seemed so unimportant. Everything before less than two years ago lacked basic importance, but on the other hand she knew on an intellectual level she should feel something- anything at all

Her head began to ache. It was insidious, the pain. It had started to creep up on her while she was searching for the slippery memory. It sparked in the middle of her skull, flickering like a near-extinguished match in the middle of a forest floor. The ache wouldn't stay so silent. For insomnia and argument's sake, she could no longer consider suspicion an emotion. As Senka moved stiffly across the plush carpet of her hotel room, bare feet sinking into the pile, she searched for the thread of some emotion that might poke through the tightly woven tapestry of her earliest memories but all she could find was picture after picture- snapshots she could only regard with a detached interest. It was disturbing. The more she probed her own mind the more the angry flame of headache flared before finally it exploded with the force of dynamite

The pain sent Senka to her knees. Lightning tore holes at her pupils, flooding her vision with a flash of prickly white. Her hands numbed and then shook, her breath caught in her throat as though the muscles themselves were paralyzed. Her mouth hung open, her ears roared, her whole body flushed hot and then cold. For a moment she believed she was dying and could only relish the irony of dying alone from a simple headache. Gradually the pain dulled to simmer and she was able to gulp in a breath, her body crumpled on the floor. She could once again move, but she didn't want to. She didn't want to tempt the agony again. Her eyes burned and throbbed as though she'd spent an hour staring into the sun

And she'd forgotten what on earth she'd been so worked up about just a moment ago. In the wake of the unexpected crest of pain, she could only reason it wasn't all that important anyway.

* * *

Nothing. Days later and valuable hours wasted and Pamela Landy had learned nothing from her reverse power play. In fact, she had lost ground with not only the team but also with Toro. She felt he was nearing the end of his own patience with her plan of waiting, but she didn't feel she could inform him of her suspicions. Her gut still ached with the idea that someone within the team, within the buzzing nest of a room, was a traitor. She couldn't risk the possibility that Toro was already well aware of that fact. Experience with corruption- deep, infiltrating corruption- had taught her to trust absolutely no one but now she was beginning to doubt herself. The cards were stacked against her and her time was running out. She had no evidence against Rike, nothing but a small shudder than ran up her spine and she couldn't take a feeling to court. If he had a mole in the team, he or she wasn't poking their head out of their hole. Perhaps they'd been instructed to lie low, but fueled by pure instinct she knew better. It was something darker, something more sinister… at the least, there was a more intellectual reason behind the stillness

She was broken from her intense thought with a start. A shrill chirp sounded from somewhere within her desk. Pam lifted her head and pulled herself up, scooting her chair away and pausing. After a moment, her hand shot out and opened the upper left drawer, reaching inside to grab her ringing phone. She took a moment to regard the display, which instantly caused her to pause. Her brows knit together as she read the numbers again, 555-5555. The number itself was ridiculous and childish. A wash of annoyance first passed through her body before the floor dropped out from beneath her. She couldn't get the phone opened and answered fast enough while still keeping her voice calm and cool

"Pamela Landy," she intoned, exhaling a pent-up breath and feeling the tension of the adrenaline rush trickle out with it. Her heart still raced in her ears but for a moment she was able to reason that perhaps she was being silly with her jumpy reaction. She could only relax for a moment before the voice that responded caused her blood to freeze

"I got your message," Bourne clipped, hearing the soft whoosh of her lungs through his headset. On his end of the line he had already started a countdown, numbers falling away by the second in the event he needed to ensure he couldn't be traced in any way. At one level he trusted her, but he didn't trust her reasons

"David," Landy said, the word falling out of her mouth. It felt foreign and unreal as though she needed to tongue it for a while to examine its true nature. "I'm glad it got your attention. Listen, this is very important. We have reason to believe your lives may be in danger-

"Our lives are always in danger, Pam. Who is 'we?'" Bourne looked across the café table to Nicky. Her hands were nervously worrying at a red cloth napkin, her gaze stuck like glue to his face. He felt a twinge of performance anxiety, like a bat sweeping low at him out of nowhere

"The Agency, but mainly I'm talking about myself. I believe your lives are in danger. We seem to have a rogue team out there. There's at least one handler and one assassin. They're working together to sweep up the mess left over after Treadstone and Blackbriar and that mess includes Nicky and you.

"And you," Jason added, feeling a complete lack of surprise. He knew on some level that normal people reacted to the idea of a possible threat to their lives with fear, panic, or anger, even, but the first thing he began to do was scan the room and account for faces and postures, double-checking his own first impressions. Parsons saw the subtle change and was instantly on guard, the poor napkin clenched tightly in a fist. Bourne shook his head slightly, trying to signal for her to relax but she didn't seem able to and the most important task was information. Consoling Nicolette would have to come later

"Yes, I suppose I'm in some danger too, but thus far the only targets have been previously trained black ops agents. Physically I'm not a threat. If they're going to take me out, I'll be an afterthought once the real challenges are out of the way… and you're a challenge.

"So you thought you'd do the assassin a favor and make it easier by pairing Nicky and me up together? You figured you'd save them a trip?"

"You're taking this the wrong way, David," Landy could feel her fingers tighten around the cell phone and had to consciously loosen them, forcing her thoughts to speed up. She didn't count on being met with hostility and while his tone indicated more of an ironic quip, she couldn't be sure. It carried all of the markers of a verbal trap. "Nicky didn't stand a chance in hell on her own and I know if any of the ex-agents can take care of themselves, it's you. You-

"Enough. Eight seconds, Pam-

"I'm not tracing this call, Bourne. We have all the time we need. This is my personal phone," she was suddenly aware she wasn't dealing entirely with the same person she met in New York. Something had happened, changes had occurred, and if she had to wager her life on "David" or "Jason" she would bet it was the latter she was speaking to more directly.

"Seven. Six," Jason's finger was on the disconnect button as the seconds ticked away on the display. He wasn't watching them, but instead he was relying on an impeccable internal clock. Instead his gaze was fixed on Nicky. She was nearing panic and while her panicked state was typically understated, panic at this point simply would not do. He hoped as long as he kept her attention, she would keep her cool

"Where are you? Tell me where you are. I'll fly over and get you myself, transport you to a safehouse." Despite knowing precisely what the countdown was supposed to do, Pam still felt the effects of it. She knew she was supposed to feel pressured by the shrinking numbers but she still felt a twinge of anxiety. She didn't know whether he'd really hang up when he reached one. She hadn't been tracing the call. In fact, she wasn't even prepared to do so with her own phone.

"You're out of your mind if you think I'll agree to that. Four, three…

"Wait, wait. Stop. Just stop. I understand if you don't trust us, and that's fine, but if you're not going to take our help then you're going to have to help us. You know better than anyone over on this side. All I've got is a pretty vague physical description- female, brunette with blue eyes, five foot six or seven. That's all I have. She's… a whole generation younger than you, Bourne. What are we looking at here? I can't find any records on another clandestine program. There's nothing on any female Treadstone or Blackbriar agent.

There was a long moment of silence on the line and Landy had to clench her jaw to refrain from peeking to ensure that the connection wasn't severed. It wasn't. Bourne, however, had taken to staring. Something familiar tickled at his brain, made his eyes ache in the most distant, dull way. He searched for it, replayed Pamela's speech in his head, but he couldn't recreate the feeling. He realized he had been silent long enough to feel tension coming from both women- the one sitting across from him and the one oceans away. "Even if there is a program, you won't find records. If the Agency's behind it, you're an idiot to think they'll hand you the files. And you're equally stupid to have me make contact. Wake up. You're being played."

This time, there was no doubt in Pam's mind the connection had been closed but it was likely she wouldn't have heard a word spoken afterward. As Bourne stood and dismantled his laptop set-up to mobilize him and Nicky, Pam stood and was momentarily paralyzed by indecision. She drew in a hitched breath and then rushed to her landline telephone, dialing Toro's cell. His baritone voice answered in an instant, gruff and impatient

"Bourne called."

* * *

Deep within the belly of Pamela Landy's cell phone, a tiny digital beacon called out miles away to its master. Triggers fired upon connection and it only took 60 full seconds for Rike to download all of the information he needed. It would have been so simple if Bourne had just opened up like a good agent and revealed his whereabouts, but in truth Martin would have had to do the grunt work to check the accuracy anyway. It would take a few hours to decrypt and decipher the intel, triangulate a location, but all of the waiting and working would pay off very shortly. A tinny beep from his laptop signaled the completed download and Rike sat, cracking his knuckles before his dark brows furrowed in concentration. Step one was to find a program that would shuffle caller ID numbers. That would be easy enough…


	17. Mojo Pin

_Typical lawsuit avoidance: some of these characters aren't mine and I'm definitely not pretending that they are. That would be bad and illegal and stuff_

_So, hi guys! I'm not going to say that this story is nearing the end because it's not, but it's past the halfway point and I've found myself in a rather interesting situation. I started off with a vague plotline in my head but I never expected to get this far. I certainly didn't ever expect to actually care about the satisfaction of you folk so much and that's where I'm met with a bit of a problem. The bit I've got coming up far closer to the end (not this chapter or the next, but it's coming) seems like it might… I don't know… blindside some of you. I mean, I've been dropping hints here and there, weaving in clues, but I haven't been blatant about them because where's the fun in that? The pro is that there is, of course, fun to a surprise! The con is that I feel as though I may run the risk of feeding into cliché and disappoint those of you who have stuck with me for so long._

_Here's my point: I need a huge favor, even from those of you who haven't slipped in a comment or review yet. I know you spend your valuable time reading! You can't hide from me! I read your diary. Anyway, let me know somehow (private message, review-type comment, smoke signal, bat signal, telepathy- preferably one of the first two) a couple of things: where you see this story going (to see if any of you are picking up what I'm puttin' down clue-wise), where you would like to see this story going, and where you would be absolutely heartbroken or pissed to see this story go. The last one's really the most important. My creative side's stubborn and loud, but after some contemplation I've got an alternate plan in mind should where I intended the story to lead be the one shady place you all would much rather it not go_

_Before you ask, yes! I could be more cryptic AND wordy! Now, after this epic friggin' intro, here's the chapter_

_P.S: I owe any extra clarity and coherence in this, the previous, and any forthcoming chapters to texamich's generous proofreading. Public thanks for that!_

* * *

"Don't forget anything. Don't leave anything behind. Nothing at all," Jason instructed from his post in the bathroom, gloved hands making broad but extensive sweeps across the counters and fixtures to swipe away any signs of their presence. He could feel his pulse in his temples and against all odds he could feel the vaguest sense of panic creeping up into the bottom of his throat. It made sounding calm a whole new challenge, but he was prepared to tackle it. Perhaps, however, Nicky wasn't entirely convinced. Even from the bathroom Bourne could hear and feel the flutter of nervous energy coming from her body. The sound of clothes forced into bags was multiplied in his ears, as was the grinding of chair legs against the carpet. For a moment Jason had to pause and suppress the urge to scream at her and tell her to shut up- she was being too loud. Someone would hear. Incredibly, the strain of just being silent in the matter was causing his skin to flush warm and beads of sweat to gather at his temples and the nape of his neck. An ache started to wrap around his skull like icy steel fingers.

"I'm not going to forget anything. I-I've got my clothes, the laptop, shoes, and that's all I came with. I don't have anything else," Nicky's response came right after Jason's command but time had seemed to have slowed. Quickly Bourne lifted an arm to wipe at his brow and then poked his head out of the bathroom, watching the flurry of motion as Nicky darted around the small space to gather her belongings in a disorganized stream-of-consciousness manner.

"Your passport, your money, and anything you've touched that can't be wiped or destroyed. Don't forget about all of that. And… And for god's sake, can you please just go from one end of the room to the other and pack your things like that? Jumping from place to place, you're going to fucking forget something!"

Time froze as Parsons' head whipped around to stare slack-jawed at Bourne. His fingers were clutching the frame of the bathroom door so tightly his nails scratched a groove into the white paint to show the light wood beneath. His face was shiny and damp, and every muscle in his body was tightened and tense, poised for action at any moment. He had suddenly, it seemed, become a human rubber band, stretched to the point of breaking and again Nicky was afraid. She could put up with his constant worrying and reminders. She could even withstand him checking the work she'd already done over and over without comment, but this new surge of temper that had found its was into his behavior was terrifying. It was worse than a gun barrell against her skull. She drew in a breath against the anxious tension in her own chest, straightening her posture and flattening her expression. Her heart beat wildly in her ribcage, threatening to make a grand escape, but from one corner of her mind she knew the only way to possibly diffuse this unusual situation was to do something unusual.

"Actually, David, I think I'm sick of packing and cleaning for today. Let's just go to bed. It's almost 10:30. We'll pick up where we left off first thing in the morning. Do you want something to eat before room service closes? Before you got here, I had this great basbousa dessert from downstairs. It's got coconut and hazelnuts and lemon," After a beat's pause, she shrugged and continued on. "Now that I think about it that sounds awesome. I'm going to order some.

Jason made no move to stop her when she went to the phone. He made no move at all as she dialed and placed the order. He remained still by the time she hung up and for one very long illogical second, Nicky feared he had perhaps frozen in stone or had some sort of catatonic breakdown. She couldn't immediately fathom the truth, which was that her plan had actually worked. She had managed to act so completely against Bourne's assessment of her character that she had shocked the momentum from his downward spiral of fear.

When the surprise factor really wore off, he noted with even further astonishment that the hard goal-driven, paranoia-drenched "Bourne" had taken a step back. If Nicky could reason taking a few more hours to sit back, sleep, and eat some cake, perhaps vacating in the middle of the night wasn't the most pressing issue. His brain felt sluggish from exhaustion, as did his body. It would do neither of them any good to hit the road in less than top condition. The mind of Webb, for the first time in a long time, prevailed over the instinct animal urge of Bourne and it felt like a relief. However, he couldn't justify staying until daylight.

Muttering an apology, David moved to sit at the edge of the bed, working his fingers, feeling the muscles in his hands spasm once from the rigid grasp with which he'd held the doorframe. "We've got to leave very, very early. It can't be any later than four. We're going to get a couple hours of sleep, get up at 2:30, finish packing, and then get going. We can… we can stop somewhere on our way for breakfast or you can go back to sleep in the car. Something like that." He pressed his hands against his thighs, taking a quiet breath and then giving Nicky a sideward glance, a single brow raised. "Okay?"

Nicky felt a huge internal load lifting off of her shoulders and she silently thanked the god of mentally unstable assassins. A genuine smile appeared bright and full across her sun-freckled face and she quickly nodded her agreement. She would have agreed they leave right this moment if she could have done so with a calm Bourne, but this was even better. "Okay," she allowed, her voice a breathy laugh of relief. Before she could rediscover control over her actions, her lips were pressed against his warm forehead and her arms were wrapped around his neck. Moments ago- she realized with a twinge of fear- this may have gotten her killed. Now, however, it got her a brief if awkward hug in return.

* * *

Senka's ribs were on fire, but it wasn't a roaring and searing heat. It was a dull simmer, so far from the forefront of her conscious mind that it mattered as much as the weather in Spain mattered. Images danced through her skull like a speed addict's production of The Nutcracker, twirling and leaping in a violent wash of color and action. She was ripped between points in time, torn from place to place, and transported from one train of thought to the next with no inkling of her final destination. First stop was somewhere dark and quiet in a lonely, echoed way. Voices sounded far away from beneath her self-imposed cave of scratchy polyblend cotton and the plastic-metal mutant of a flashlight felt huge in her soft clutching hands.

Next stop, without warning, was the dizzying inability to tell up from down or left from right. Everything was white and bright and sterile. The scent of rubbing alcohol felt as though its wafting tendrils were reaching straight into her brain, swabbing away single neurons at a time, sending the world spinning on an axis that was spinning on itself. The entire room was a frigid cold with two sole points of warmth. The voice in her ear- a voice she couldn't connect a face to, a voice she couldn't put into words, only sensations- was one. The other source of warmth slid directly into her veins as her words spilled out in response to his. The heat was a blanket, swaddling her, coddling her, assuring her everything would be just fine if only she just listened.

Then the voice of calm and perfectly unidentified reason was gone and the pure and wonderful warmth was replaced by flickering, barely contained fire. Around her, freckled pig-tailed girls in hand-pressed Girl Scouts uniformed laughed and pointed, playing Cat's Cradle with s'more-sticky fingers while faceless chaperones gossiped at the perimeter. Fear tugged at the base of her stomach and crept like invading weeds into every muscle of her being and she was sure something terrible was about to happen yet she was helpless to act. She was merely a watcher and so she watched. She watched as, grinning like a fool, one soccer mom gathered the group around for a song. She gasped as, grinning like a fool, one soccer princess plowed purposefully sidelong into her, sending her stumbling onto her hands and knees in the dirt. She felt the fire's heat flicker at her face, smelled it singe the ends of her long chestnut hair, scrambled away in abject terror in time for the preteen bully to be gently chided for the "accident." Rabidly shaking in fear and anger, she felt her mind jerked once again.

She was still shaking in dread and rage, this time cowering at the feet of a faceless man. His shoes were heavy- boots, laced from top to bottom in patchwork leather. All she could hear over and over was the distinctive thud they made against the scuffed and scratched wood of the hallway floor on the way to her room at the end. The shine from his boots was worn away from years of use and misuse. She was scared of those boots and the man they were attached to. She knew, in the far away manner that her dreams sometimes allowed, that she didn't have to be scared of the man for long, but for now- the moment in time her mind was lingering in- she thought she could very well die simply from fright. A ragged hand, calloused and dirty, reached down to grab onto her too-large shirt. She felt herself jerked upward fast enough to catch her tongue in the back of her throat and choke, and the sensation of lifting and choking followed her even as she began to wake.

Her phone was ringing, she knew that. She also knew it was an unusually painful and slow process to get from sleeping to waking and she did all she could to speed it along. Her consciousness lifting blended with the lifting of her head and she found she was indeed actually coughing. It hurt not her throat but her side. Each cough sent a jagged slice of pain from her stomach to her ribs and she made a note to investigate that later. The phone was her priority, she had to get it. She was up and on her feet, stumbling drunkenly toward the nightstand. It took a moment, but she realized she must have passed out on the floor after the headache struck her down. It didn't matter. She had to get the phone. Her fingers wrapped around the cool plastic coating and she felt an irrational wash of relief pass over her, making it possible for her to answer with a calm and undisturbed tone.

"Hello."

"I don't care what you were doing. What matters is what you're about to do," the voice commanded nearly before she could get the entire greeting in. Senka took a seat at the edge of the bed, cringing slightly and beginning to carefully stretch. A quick glimpse at the clock told her she had spent over five hours curled up on the floor.

_"_Where am I heading and what's the name?" The earlier mental note recalled, she lifted the bottom of her shirt to take a brief peek at her self-stitched bullet wound. She picked at the edges of the bandage and then peeled it away, but her brows had begun to rise before she'd even gotten that far.

"You're going to Cairo, Egypt. Your flight leaves in six hours, so you need to hurry and get packed. Which passport you use is up to your discretion. You're going after Jason Bourne and Nicolette Parsons. They're going to be together, but I don't know an exact location.

"Cairo's not exactly a small place, here," Senka frowned, ripping the remains of the bandage away and setting it aside. Absentmindedly, she pressed her fingers against the pink-red skin, the furrow in her forehead deepening as she felt the heat radiating from the skin. "Give me a region. Are we talking Giza, Heliopolis–"

"Heliopolis. They were working out of a café in the Heliopolis area, possibly an internet café.

"I'm pretty sure there are only about three internet cafes in all of Cairo so if they were using one, that's a great lead. Or at least it's a start. I can take it from there if I don't get burned. Listen, my side's looking hot. You think I should–"

"Do you have a fever?"

"No, but I don't want to chance it," Senka stood and moved over to pull fresh dressing supplies from her duffel bag, dousing her hands in antiseptic gel before applying gauze and tape to the red, angry wound.

"Leave it be. It'll be fine. You're young and healthy. There's no reason to fight something that doesn't need fighting. You know the drill: radio silence unless there's a problem or until you've succeeded. This time, remember what I said.

The line went dead and Senka tossed the phone onto the bed, taking a breath. She really didn't remember what he said- at least not what she was supposed to realize he was referring to- but she didn't give it any more thought than that. She stood, frozen in absolute uncertainty. It should have been an easy decision to make. An inch from her fingers was a large bottle of antibiotics to be taken to prevent infection. She couldn't logically reason out why she couldn't take them in the case of an actual infection, except she had been told she didn't need them. However, if she ever needed them, she needed them now. Pain sparked wildly in her temples and behind her eyes as she reached for the bottle. Her hands trembled and she fumbled, trying to open the cap but she couldn't force her fingers to work. After an agonizing half-minute battle between brain and body, she threw the bottle back into the bag with a cry of frustration. The ache in her head gradually vanished and with an aggravation-tensed jaw she began to pack.

* * *

Pamela Landy was unusually nervous. She had just taken her own game to a new, far more dangerous level by knowingly betraying the trust of the one person she still could possibly trust. She had little reason not to trust Toro, but Bourne's words had rattled her cage. They were meant to; she knew that, but she couldn't deny that he had a very important point. The Agency was no stranger to playing games of its own and their games quite frequently began in deception and ended in death. She no longer wanted anything to do with either. Pam glanced down to ensure her hands were not shaking and her posture remained strong before she looked back up to clear her throat and attract the attention of the clump of busy workers who were fully engrossed in who-knew-what. Toro stood by her side, as anxious as she was but somewhat less versed in hiding it. A rosy flush crept up over the collar of his shirt and his hands all-too-often adjusted his sleeves. Landy feared his reaction was more excitement than worry, however. In her own heightened state, she was finding it hard to precisely decipher between the two.

"Jason Bourne has made contact with us," Landy spoke the moment the room had quieted down enough for her voice to carry. The name of Bourne had a near magical effect over the rest of the voices. An eerie hush fell over the room and Pam felt every eye on her, every mind clinging to the syllables that fell from her mouth. As she looked around the room, she tried to zero in her attention on anyone that looked too eager or too interested but it was almost impossible. Everyone was eager and interested and not necessarily for some nefarious, traitorous reason. Among these young agents, Jason Bourne had become a legend. He had become a mix of James Bond and the Abominable Snowman—an ingenious spy who no one had ever seen. Despite her desire for instant gratification, Pamela knew she'd simply have to plow on and allow her plan to unravel itself.

"He confided in me that he's currently in Nixa, Missouri. He refused to be any more specific than that, but I have reason to believe he's trying to reconstruct his past. We need to be able to find him and collect him in the most docile way possible, so I need you all to absolutely drop everything you are doing right now. You need to find us everything and anything you can on pre-Agency Bourne. His name was David Webb. All we have is what's in his file and you've all got his file. Play journalists, play family friends, play ex-girlfriends… play ex-boyfriends. I don't care how you do it, but I need more information. What we have is not enough. Do a minimal amount of fact-checking on anything you find, but I need anything you can find… anything at all. This is all going to come down to some old-fashioned questions and research, folks. Anything official is long gone by now.

Landy waited as usual for them to grind into gear before stepping through the doors and out into the hallway. Toro was quick to follow. She was already prepared for the questions he was going to ask. She had rehearsed the answers in her head, rehearsed even how to be certain they wouldn't sound rehearsed. She wasn't caught by surprise this time. "Why in the hell can't we just storm in there and get him, Pam? Why in the hell-holy fuck are we just sitting back and biting our nails when we could snatch him and be back by sundown? It wouldn't even take a goddamn hour!"

Pamela gave Greg her best calm, condescending smile and a tilt of her head. Her expression covered the nerves that continued to rush and roil just under the surface perfectly well. If he had asked anything but the expected, she may not have been able to pull off such a polished response. "I've got less than a week left on this project and then it's all back on your head. You could go in there with guns blazing, but you know the files. That never turns out well. If you spook him, you're going to lose him for good. He made contact, so he wants to talk. I'm trying to give him something to talk about here. Let's not fool ourselves. He's got the power. If we can unlock something from his past- a memory he doesn't have, information he doesn't know- then we'll have leverage we can use to bargain with him. If bargaining doesn't work, we'll try your caveman approach. Like you said," Landy summed up with a smile, "it wouldn't even take a goddamn hour."


	18. Judas Kiss

_Disclaimer: I'm not trying to get sued, so canon characters don't belong to me!_

_Okay! Hi! Thanks for your responses, everyone. If you didn't respond- didn't feel you needed to or just didn't want to- the open call for feedback still stands. It will always stand! I like to know what you are thinking. Speaking of which, I have had about zero time to sit down and write since the last update but I've had plenty of time to think and I believe I may almost completely change the back half of this story. It will probably end up making this one shorter, but will leave open an easier possibility for a sequel. I'm shocked it looks like I'll actually finish this one, so… basically if a sequel doesn't happen, it'll just mean that the "twisty" part comes at the end instead of somewhere closer to the middle. That's all. I'm getting wordy again, so I'll wrap this up and get to typing. Once again, thanks! You've been amazingly supportive! Stick with me._

_P.S: Another quick thanks to texamich! She's the premiere ninja of proofreading: fast and fantastic!_

* * *

The first tendrils of harsh desert sun had already started to snake in through the wispy gauze curtains when Jason Bourne began to stir. Nicky Parsons was still fast asleep, the upper half of her body curled across Bourne's lap, her arm hanging off the edge of the bed. Jason was sitting up, his head tilted awkwardly against the wall, his arm across Nicky's back. Once he started to wake the process finished quickly and he straightened up, reaching his hand up to check his watch. "Shit," he muttered and shook Parsons, sliding instantly out from beneath her. He had gone from zero to sixty without a moment to think. He wasn't even fully awake, but he was aware it was past sun-up and they were supposed to be well on their way to the border already. "Get up. Nicky! Wake up. Did you touch the goddamn alarm?" His words were harsh, but his tone was even. He wasn't alert enough to take an angry tone with her. He needed to move too fast to devote the energy to anger.

"What? No… The alarm? No, I didn't do anything to it…" Parsons' voice was hoarse from sleep as she struggled to sit and reorient herself with the room. Her hands were at her face quickly, pushing away tousled hair and rubbing at unfocused eyes. Bourne was just a blur of frantic motion. She could hear the swish of clothes thrown into bags and the click of the bathroom door opening. "What time is it?" It seemed like the most logical thing to ask at the moment, but as soon as the words had left her mouth Nicky wished she could take them back. She could feel a shift in tension- namely, a drastic and frightening increase in it.

"It's almost seven o'clock. I don't know what happened, but get up. Get your clothes on and your shoes on. Go downstairs and check out of the hotel. I'll finish packing and wipe this place down," Jason yanked the zipper of one bag shut and moved to the next, packing away Nicky's laptop and cell phone charger. "I'll go right out through the doors and load up the car. Meet me down the street at that café. Get breakfast if you're hungry. We're not stopping until we need gas."

Nicky opened her mouth to respond but Bourne brushed past her, thrusting fresh, clean clothes into her hands and then pointing toward the bathroom. "Change so I can pack away what you're wearing." Despite the brief mental detour, he continued on with his previous set of instructions. He didn't hope Parsons followed his train of thought. He expected her to. "I have some money for you… cash. Get all the food you think you're going to need at the café. Like I said, we're not stopping."

"What about you?" Nicky asked on her way to the bathroom. She moved quickly, not bothering to fully close the door while peeling off clothes and shuffling on the fresh outfit. Her hair stuck out awkwardly from the frantic change, defying gravity in places. On her way to her shoes, she plunged the dirty laundry into the remaining open bag.

"What about me? I don't need any food," Bourne answered without missing a beat. He zipped up the bag and slid around the table to slip his fingers through Nicky's hair, shaking it down from its messy state without a moment's thought. Parsons gave him a raised brow both at the gesture and the statement. She couldn't help but feel an odd pang in the pit of her stomach. For a moment she thought perhaps he was going to grab her head and shove her toward the door- something harsh and hurried. She hadn't expected a quick hair fix. In comparison it seemed sweet, despite her acute awareness that she was just being silly. Her hair was "wrong" and he was making it "right." She was ripped from her mental loop by a nudge toward the door. "Check out time. Remember: go to the café."

"You need food," Nicky chided, whipping her shoelaces around and tightening them before briskly heading for the door. Her heart was pounding in her chest. She couldn't fight the nervousness nor could she grasp precisely what had her quite so wound up. Her hand shot out to grab first the room key and then the door knob. "I'm getting you food!"

"I don't… need…" Bourne furrowed his brow and took a moment to stare at the door as it clicked shut behind Nicky. He stepped back and hefted first one piece of luggage and then another onto his shoulder while continuing to gaze at the doorway. For a second something peeked past the surge of paranoia in his brain. It was a glimpse of something familiar, something he would even dare to classify as "normality." It was warming and unsettling all at once. Quickly he pushed all thoughts of emotion from his mind. He had a car to get to and a café to meet at. He had a country to evacuate and an assassination attempt to avoid.

* * *

Landy headed back toward her office, stark white Styrofoam container of steamed Chinese vegetables squeaking irritatingly in her hand. At the moment, she felt as though it would be more appropriate to fill a cereal bowl with Tums and eat it with a spoon. Her nerves were aflame, and so was her stomach. The idea that perhaps she was turning her back on the only person she could trust while he still placed his absolute trust in her was getting to her, but she had to remind herself it was a necessary evil. She had placed her confidence in the wrong people before. In fact, placing complete confidence in the Agency at all was a mistake. By its nature, it was untrustworthy. While she knew in her heart she was doing the right thing, something nagged at her mind so often and so hard that she had to continually remind herself sometimes withholding the truth was indeed "right." The longer she lived, she reflected, the more the line between right and wrong seemed blurred and subjective.

She turned the corner and cradled her lunch against her body, opening up her office door. She paused at the view she was met with. It seemed as though someone had thought to set up an impromptu intervention while she was out seeking lunch. As her gaze panned across the room, her heart sunk through the floor. She had to struggle to keep her expression neutral. Seated in a semi-circle were two suited agents she'd never seen before plus Martin Rike and Kelly Waynesboro with Gregory Toro posing as the standing sentry, waiting for her to enter. She stepped inside, moving over to her desk and setting her food container down. "I'll go out on a limb and assume you aren't here to congratulate me."

"Pam…" Toro started as he pushed away from a bookshelf, rubbing at his glasses and then slipping them onto his face. First he sounded regretful but after a glimpse at his backup, his tone took on an authoritative, nearly angry edge. "Do you have something you'd like to get off of your chest? Before these men arrest you, that is."

"Sure," Landy sighed as she lowered herself into her desk chair, resting her hands on the desktop where they could be easily seen. "Bourne's not in Missouri, but you know that or you wouldn't be in here." She fought the urge to work her jaw and instead turned to rest her gaze on Toro, ignoring the other figures in the room. "You should take note of the other people in this room, Greg. Chances are one of them will be signing your death order." She gave a long pause, but not long enough to allow a response. "Unless, of course, I've grossly misjudged you. Unless, of course, you're the one I should have watched out for."

"Okay. Pamela Landy, you're under arrest for obstruction of justice and aiding and abetting a fugitive of the law, plus a shitload of other charges each more serious than the last. You'll have plenty of time to read up on them while you're in a cell, but rest assured you'll get a chance to talk," Greg pulled out an envelope from his inside jacket pocket and dropped it onto the desk. It hit and slid toward Pam. Slowly she reached out and lifted it up, opening it to peek inside. It was the warrant for her arrest and the list of offenses went on for pages. Her expression must have given something away. Out of the corner of her eye she could see a flicker of a smile dance over Rike's face.

"Greg, honestly, what's going on here? I'll be upfront with you. I lied and said Bourne was in Missouri to keep the troops busy, because I thought we had a mole. Obviously I was right, and they're making a pre-emptive strike with…" Pam waved the envelope with two lofted brows, "with whatever the hell this is. Me behind bars is going to get us no where."

An expression passed over Toro's face that Landy had never seen before. It was rage- real rage. It was miles away from any professional annoyance she had ever seen him experience. This time the emotion was personal and deep. In a gesture made fumbling and rushed by anger, Greg pulled out a handheld recording device and hit play, and his face flushed a capillary red. The voice that suddenly filled the room was hers, there was no doubt about it. There was something odd about it, something unnatural, but in Toro's gut-reaction state of mind there was no way he would pick up on it. "I've got a problem," the voice stated. "Yeah. For the prestige of a clean-up job, I'm going to lie to him. You'll be killing them. They are dangerous and need to be contained. There will be boundless consequences if you're shot on site, just remember: I want Bourne. Nicky, too." Toro's finger clicked down on the stop button and silence hung in the room. Landy felt just as shocked and betrayed as Toro did. To hear those words in her own voice felt terrible and for a surreal moment even she questioned whether she said them or not. She was quick to deny, though.

"That wasn't me," Pam said, thankful her voice came out sounding far more assured than she felt.

Toro shook his head violently and then gestured to the agents who rose fast with handcuffs in hand. "Just shut up, Pam. Shut the fuck up. We got that off of your cell phone, the cell phone you wanted Bourne to call. Rike tapped it back when you were first pulled on board. We just started listening when you said Bourne was making contact. You screwed yourself. It's probably best you keep your mouth closed now."

* * *

The city dirt and dust clung to Senka's face made damp from sweat and a slight fever she had started to run. The morning sun was already beating down hard and Cairo's sidewalks filled up early. She had wasted no time getting overseas. She had only washed the bitter sticky stink of self-tanner mixed with the olive coloring of henna off of her body in the hotel bathroom seconds before taking off of her flight. Her hair was still damp from the dye-job as she boarded the plane. At first it was a simple jet black but she realized with her sharp Anglo-Saxon features she would never completely blend as authentic Egyptian, she made the split-second decision to weave a more intricate mental cover story. She always found it easier to have a story in her head, even if no one asked. She pasted in chunky strips of peroxide to give herself amateur brassy highlights and within fifteen minutes became a spoiled rich Alexandrian, able to afford the luxuries of plastic surgery and dyes to deny her ethnic heritage. She was suddenly, in essence, an American pretending to be an Egyptian seeking the American aesthetic. It was looping logic and she would stand out in a crowd, but she- unlike Bourne- knew that sometimes being too ordinary could in fact seem extraordinary.

Now, weaving her way confidently through the early morning throngs of people, her highlights glistened a naïve bronze in the sun. It was practically a shining target for her head. No trained assassin could be that silly, that stupid. She wasn't the only one to attune with Western fashion, of course. There were plenty of others around her, but they had nothing to lose if they were spotted. That was precisely what she hoped to use to her advantage. Surrounded by busied adults on their way to work and ancient crumbling buildings Senka looked impossibly younger than her mere eighteen years. She looked like a well-carried but over-assured high schooler, ready to confront a distasteful comment from an onlooker but far from prepared to deal with the results of her actions.

Senka was trained well, but those skills just couldn't be learned. One either had them or didn't, and she had them.

She turned the corner to close in on her third stop of the day. The backdrop of her journey was gorgeous and she could see every detail of it in acute clarity. The brown contacts she wore not only changed the hue of her irises from cool blue to rich chocolate brown but also provided an invaluable sunglass effect. A tiny sliver of her brain mourned at the prospect of being unable to get a chance to stop and really take in the sights. Her feet were currently gliding across the site of ancient history. Brilliant minds of the past possibly walked across the very same sand that brushed over her sandaled feet while contemplating the construction of monumental, lasting structures that would puzzle the ages. Senka even, for an instant, wished for just a piece of the knowledge of what it must feel like to know what it was like to create something that would last for millennia- something that would be a wonder of the world. It was silly and stupid, and she quickly brushed off the sentiment as such, but it rang so loudly as significant for that brief moment it seemed as though it was actually profound.

Before she had time to consciously react, her pace had slowed the moment her most recent target business came into view. It wasn't the small internet-wired breakfast café that piqued her radar but instead a small grimy automobile idling in front of it. The car had local plates and looked like other cars on the road, but the obstructing sand on the rear window struck her as too obstructing. She could see the silhouette of a dark-haired male inside but the wipers had only been primed to clear a small crescent of space on the glass- unlike the wide half-moon shape left relatively undusted on the other cars on the road. A shot of adrenaline plowed through her heart like a javelin when she saw a familiar profile hurry from the door of the café and into the passenger side of the car. The hair cut and color was different from the pictures she was given, but she could see past it. There was no question Senka had lucked out. Nicolette Parsons was a mere ten feet away. Logic would follow that the shadowed man was Jason Bourne.

Suddenly, a plethora of options panned through her head. She had a gun concealed in her handbag. She could whip that out and fire off two rounds, but the car was already in drive and the motion to reach into the bag and pull out the gun would be obvious to Bourne. He could too easily just drive away or worse- put the car in reverse. He had a clear path to plow right toward her. She continued forward at her leisurely pace as the car shifted and pulled out into the bustle of Cairo traffic. Senka looked around quickly and then stepped off of the sidewalk, memorizing the car's license plate in case she chose what probably approximated as Plan N. It was the last possible plan she wished to use. She didn't want to allow them to go and pick up the trail later, but it was on the table and it was starting to become a glaring probability. She slid through the cars and traffic to get across the street, speeding up her pace in order to glance over her shoulder and get a look into the side window of the car.

In one motion, Senka bumped into a grubbily dressed teenager and loudly protested in the angry, self-obsessed tone that would be expected from the appearance and demeanor she displayed. With a squeal, she let loose a stream of flawless Northern Egyptian Arabic, waving her purse around. "You filthy thief! I see what you tried to do there! I am not stupid. I know your dirty games. You touch a woman just to get her money!" As hoped, her hysterical antics drew a small bit of attention and her waving, flashy purse acted like a flag, drawing attention from other hand. That hand she held low at her waist and in it was her gun, lifted from the depths of her bag in the smooth motion necessary to get her purse from hand to hand.

In the growing crowd rumble, two shots suddenly rang out from the gun by Senka's side. No one suspected their origin, but everyone scattered. Doing her part, Senka gave a shriek and took off like all of the others. Her path took her across the street again where the Bourne's car sat stranded, two tires blown out, one still spinning and smoking with the acrid scent of burnt rubber. A quick peek confirmed to her that the vehicle had been abandoned but she didn't need to see it to know that for sure. She saw a glimpse of Nicky's hair disappearing through the back of the café and followed suit. That hair was unmistakable- black over blonde eventually took on a greenish-grey hue once washed enough times, and Senka's sense of color was impeccable. Also impeccable was her sense of direction and she knew if she could force them to the back alleys their flight options would be limited. As she plowed through the rear exit door to the dank alley ways, she allowed herself to reflect that at the very least things were going according to Plan G.


	19. Skyway Avenue

_Disclaimer: Characters that belong to other people don't belong to me. Besides, I'm not making any money off of this so no lawsuits! No lawsuits!_

_Sooo… um. You may be shocked and confused at two updates so close together! Don't let this mislead you. I'm not promising this will be the beginning of a pattern of prompt shiny new chapters. I'm recovering from a very, very bad haircut- the shock and betrayal of which are still acutely sharp in my mind, so I need a little therapy. I figured why not live vicariously through the lives of people who have better things to worry about than the terrible disaster atop their head? I think this makes you all officially my "safe place." Thanks, guys! Have a cookie._

* * *

Kelly Waynesboro moved through her kitchen with the greatest of ease, the bubbling of pots and the sizzling of pans nearly drowning out the soft rock music playing on her stereo. The scent of tomatoes and garlic wafted pleasantly through the air, but what she looked forward to most was a nice long hot bubble bath and a reality show marathon on USA. She hoped her informal meeting would end in time for her to catch the earliest audition episodes. She found hilarity in the rejection of the oblivious. After all, she believed, if you didn't know your strengths by the age of 18 then you were fully open to public humiliation. As she went to transfer pasta from the pot to colander, her apartment buzzed from the front door. There was a moment of near-comical indecision as she was torn between completing one task and beginning another before she set the steaming pasta pot down by the sink and jogged to the little red button, pressing it with a manicured thumb. "Yeah?"

"It's Rike. I'm here for the game," the voice said, delivering just the right manner of code and tone for her to immediately allow him entry. One task completed, Waynesboro stepped back to the sink to finish preparing the meal. As Rike entered on his own accord, Kelly set the twin plates down at the table and was in the process of opening the fridge.

"What did you want to drink?"

"Tea. Iced is fine," he responded after clicking the triple locks behind himself. He crossed quickly to the open kitchen and stood stiffly beside his chair. Tension lingered in the air like a bad smell and Kelly could sense it. As she was pouring double glasses of tea, she sighed and turned to look at him.

"What's the matter, honey? Sit down and tell me what's going through your head," she tucked away the jug of tea and picked up the cups for delivery, stopping in mid-step. "You don't think you picked up a trail, do you?"

"No, no trail," Martin muttered as he yanked his chair away from the table, unbuttoning his suitcoat and lowering himself down. "There's no word from the field yet- no kill or fail confirmation."

"You know those black-op folk. You told her to keep radio silence until she gave it a go and she's going to keep it until she's succeeded or she's completely blown. She's not going to give up. We've got her wrapped up like a neat little package, Martin," Kelly set up the drinks and then took a seat across from Rike, picking up her fork and starting in on her dinner.

"I'm pretty sure her usefulness is waning. She's been running hard and fast for over a year. Her body's not buying it anymore. She told me she thought she picked up an infection, but I said just to keep going. This mess will be cleaned up and she can get all the damn rest she needs then-"

"Wait," Kelly stopped short, her fork paused halfway to her mouth, the noodles dangling lifelessly and dripping with sauce. "She's sick? How did she get sick?"

Rike shrugged indifferently, waving his hand in an act of dismissal. "She failed to take care of a wound correctly. Like I said, it doesn't matter."

"Please tell me you advised her as to which antibiotics to take," Waynesboro recited in a carefully measured tone, her soft jawline made sharp by the precipice of anger.

"Christ, don't give me that one!" Martin groaned, glowering and hunching forward to shovel pasta into his mouth. "All she had were the ones I sent and she had a plane to catch. You know damn well the Cipro in those pills wouldn't have been worth the time wasted with all the other shit they're saturated with. She'd have been drooling on herself while a mile away the plane was taking off without h-"

"You're an idiot!" Kelly hissed, pushing her chair away from the table. The action made a horrific ear-piercing screech and she could barely keep herself from standing or screaming. "If she's got an infection, infections bring fevers. Not only do fevers cause impaired physical performance, they impair mental performance." Waynesboro's shoulder twitched and she took a breath, lowering her tone to something more reasonable and reasoned. "You could already have a dead agent on your hands. Or worse. Impair her judgment enough and all that conditioning slips through the cracks like sand through a very expensive, very dangerous hourglass. She'll question just why the hell she's doing what she's doing. Why the hell she's pushing herself past fevers and pain for a voice on the phone who won't even order her to take a fucking antibiotic!"

Rike's only reaction was a raised brow but from the height of that brow and the presence of a reaction, Kelly knew she had his attention- and rightfully so. "Martin, baby, I love you. But I swear to God you'd better hope Bourne killed her. If not.. if he keeps her for interrogation? She could sing like a desperate tenor if she lives to get sick enough."

Martin stared, fork hovering over his pile of pasta, Kelly's words looping continuously through his head. He had declared radio silence and by no means would he break it. He cleared his throat once and then dropped his volume, tone even and assured. "Even sick, all she knows is what we've told her. No mistake was made, Kelly. Understand me? If this all crumbles, no mistake was made."

* * *

The door from the small internet-wired café to the dusty, claustrophobic back alley pounded open with a flourish and then swung shut. Senka skidded to a stop and doubled back, sprinting into the bistro next door and barreling her way through the patrons who were already distracted from the loud gun reports they had heard only moments before. She forced her way through the small cluster of onlookers- who were only briefly concerned by the well-dressed Egyptian in flight- and through a passage marked for employees only, turning into a staircase and bounding up two steps at a time. Her blood pumped like battery acid in her veins and her side began to burn and throb but she refused to acknowledge the pain or even the warning the pain was meant to give. She could listen later.

As she mounted the top of the stairs, she ignored the door to the tiny line of apartments and instead slipped onto the rug-draped balcony, craning her head just beyond the point of sight to see a cloud of dust obscuring her vision. One part of her brain was forced to give a nod to the strategy, but a loud creaking clang followed by the weighty thud of dropped metal alerted her to which building they had broken into. It was across the alley, four buildings down. She didn't have the time nor desire to exit back through the bistro. She heard the undulating screams of Cairo's police force in the distance and estimated she had about four minutes in this morning traffic to take care of business.

Senka swung her legs out over the balcony, grabbing a rug woven in faded reds and purples. After throwing the rug steadfastly around her shoulders she walked her toes to the very edge of the balcony, leaning back to gauge the distance to a sturdy-looking metal lamp. The bulb on the lamp had already been blown out, probably long ago judging from spider that had made the filament hollow its home, but of course the glass was a bit of a worry. She knew she wasn't perfect, but if anything was going to kill her it would be the fall. Freeing her hands from the balcony railing, she leapt, flinging her compact body across the space. She gripped the horizontal bar with her fists, feeling the skin of her palms chafing on the rough sun-heated metal, swinging and kicking off her shoes. Her legs remained together, her toes pointed and her stomach tight like an Olympic gymnast. She swung twice and then using the momentum she pushed herself up as she planted her feet on the top of the bar and straightened up to a careful crouch. She could hear the clamor and screams from across the way as Bourne and Nicky ran- in the wrong direction.

Perched precariously on the lamppost, Senka slipped her gun from her waistband and caught a shadow of movement, honed in on a male voice. Instinct pulled the trigger several times and the shadow ducked, dragging another figure with it back toward her safe crossing spot. She very deeply wished to miss, and felt a dizzying surge of relief that she reasoned away to a bout of vertigo when she saw the shadows duck and move. Her aim was good enough that the possibility existed that she could have hit one or the other fugitive from her vantage point, but in the nanosecond of the bullets' flight, she deeply regretted firing. As soon as her equilibrium returned, Senka unraveled the rug from around her neck and held it out before her like a surfboard then launched full force off of the bar. It wobbled from her weight. She sailed through the air like an oversized flying squirrel, home styled highlights dulled from bronze to mud from the chase. At the last moment, her body curled around the rug and a thick length of rope strung between balcony railings. She tumbled head over heels, hanging by her arms from the rope until she could heave her legs up and around. She crawled quickly like the spider in the lamp across the alley, one balcony railing rattling ominously with each shift she made. A bolt was rusted and loose and constantly threatened to pull away from the wall, but while Senka heard it she paid it no mind.

Gun in hand once again, she hopped the precariously loose balcony rail, bypassing its danger entirely. She saw a fleeting shadow through the dusty door's window and lashed out a foot, kicking it in against the hinge. It took two blows but the old door buckled. As she moved to slide in, the door seemed to double back on her at twice the force, thundering back toward her. Senka instantly sidestepped but the edge of the door clipped her shoulder and sent her spinning. She found herself facing forward once again and suddenly blue eyes were her focus. As Bourne stepped in to quickly close the distance between them and level the playing field, Senka made an attempt to level Bourne. Lifting the gun, she had his skull in her sights. She pulled the trigger as another wave of dizziness swept through her, but the bullet ricocheted harmlessly into the side of the wall as Bourne slammed the side of his hand into her wrist, hammering a nerve and rendering her fingers temporarily useless.

Nicky screeched from her spot in the closet at the echoing sound of the weapon. Her gasp caused her lungs to fill with mothball scented air and she choked, but more importantly she choked at the sensation of her heart leaping instantly into her throat. She exploded out of the closet door and scrambled toward the balcony, stumbling and faltering from an old, crumbling sweater caught around her heel. Jason spied her movement out of the corner of her eye and instantly knew he could not- at this moment- deal with her and the situation. "Back! Get back!" he shouted in a tone much harsher than he intended yet he didn't regret it one bit. It had the desired effect when Parsons halted instantly and ducked behind the corner. She could still see, which was troubling, but chances were a stray bullet wouldn't catch her now.

Senka was untroubled when her gun clattered to the ground. She saw Nicky's movement as well and considered having to deal with two opponents at once, but Bourne did well to take care of that possibility for her. She realized without any real depth to the thought that sometimes sentimentality could be the downfall for anyone- even an assassin. In the split second it took Bourne to neutralize the danger to Nicky, Senka landed a double-punch- one to his chin and one to his gut. Jason's hand was out and grabbing his opponent's wrist even as the air rushed from his lungs. He jammed a heel into the side of her knee and it buckled, allowing him to spin her around and jerk her arm painfully up behind her back. "Here's the easy way! Who is your handler? Who are you working for?" Bourne spat in an alarmingly calm tone, his brow damp from the flight and the fight.

Senka let out a breath and kicked out a foot to use the railing as leverage, spinning like the hands of a human clock while tensing her captured arm to use the strength of muscle rather than joint. The sideways flip partially untwisted her arm, but she stopped once she was upside down instead of completing it and ending up on her feet. She wrapped her thighs around Jason's neck and squeezed, locking her legs at the ankles. Nicky's body jolted as she watched Bourne's face turn a strained purple. His vision warped and swam at the sudden lack of blood to his brain. Stumbling, he fell against the wall and lifted a foot, pounding a shoe down at Senka's upturned chin but his movements were sluggish and poorly aimed. She twisted out of dodge and her jerking caused him to slide to the ground. He kicked again, this time catching her in the jaw.

Senka instantly tasted the metallic tang of blood and saw a bolt of stars. Involuntarily her grip loosened and Bourne could suck in a good lungful of air. Jason jerked and jabbed the heel of his palm into her groin and she felt her left leg tingle numb. Another kick to her face and Senka let loose, rolling to stumble to her feet. She spotted her gun within reach but something caught her. The malignant vertigo spun at her mind once again the moment she caught Bourne's gaze. For a fraction of a second she felt far away, floating, distant. A pain shot through Jason's head as their gaze locked. It throbbed to the rapid beat of his heart. The pain tried to tug him somewhere else, to some other memory, but he couldn't allow it. He was up and moving forward, driving his body low at her knees before he lost whatever odd advantage he had. It wasn't that he didn't know that look on her face. He knew it and it tweaked his soul. It was the stare of a soldier robbed of a future; it was the look that stared back every time he looked in a mirror. But now was no time for sympathy and regret.

Or maybe it was time for a little bit of regret. The railing gave way instantly as Senka's body crashed into it. Her hands shot out for something- anything- to grab onto but she was already airborne and on her way down. She twisted and squirmed but the railing hit the alley ground first with a resounding clang and Senka's body crumpled atop it thereafter, motionless. Jason laid on his stomach, hanging half off of the ledge and staring down to the ground and the disaster beneath him. His heart skipped in his ribcage and brain fought to escape his head. In his hands between curled fingers was a ripped, wispy fragment of cloth torn from the woman's body not during battle but in a last futile attempt to catch her in her fall. No- he thought, fighting back a surge of bitter bile- that was no woman. That was just a girl. They had sent a girl to kill him. She couldn't have even been half his age. The near-euphoric crash of relief of still being alive and safe never came. He could only stare at the destruction he seemed to leave in his wake. He had killed a teenager, among many others, and for what? For his own survival? He had nothing left and yet he still fought but now- seeing the face of the girl burned into his mind as the freshest among his list of the dead, he wondered if his continued existence was in part pure masochistic selfishness.

Panting as though she had personally fought hand to hand, Nicky slipped from the safety of her corner and reached out a hand to tentatively touch at Jason's shoulder. He didn't move, didn't flinch. He just stared at the body on the ground made blurry by distance and dust. A minute passed before Parsons made the brave decision to speak. "Jason, are you alri-"

"Just making sure she's dead," he responded as he stood, touching gingerly at his throat. His gaze was ripped from the scene on the ground by Nicky's voice. The effect was impossibly both agonizing and a relief. His gaze settled neatly on Parsons' face, her delicate features barely masking the parade of the dead inside his own brain- but she did mask them. She was alive, and she was alive because of him. That was something he could cling to, and he knew for the moment he should cling to anything he could get. He cleared his throat and then pointed toward the cramped, abandoned apartment they had invaded and by extension the exit. "We need to go now."

The sirens had risen to a shrill background theme. It was possible any moment they would find a dead girl in the alley. They had to be out of the area and on the move. They always had to be on the move. Nicky simply nodded and hurried past him, her hands shaking from adrenaline and fear. "You're not alright," she added in a low whisper, nervously pushing her hair behind her ears. "We need to talk about this. This is not okay and you're not alright."

Jason caught up to her in two strides, pressing his hand against the small of her back and propelling her forward as twice the speed she was using on her own. When he spoke, his tone left no room for argument- at the very least it was made clear that any argument would be fruitless and foolish. "We need to go."


	20. Discord in the Garden

_Disclaimer: Nooo lawsuits pleeeease! I'm not stealing intellectual property. I'm just borrowing it for a little while. I'm trying to return it in as good a condition as I found it, if not better._

_These author's notes have been crazy long lately so I'll keep this short:_

_Thanks, you're all awesome and holy crap- 20 chapters! Wow. Time to start putting the pieces together!_

* * *

Kelly Waynesboro galloped her way quickly through the wide corridors of the Agency headquarters on her way to the workroom. She had anticipated a halt to all searching for Bourne and the other wayward agents upon Landy's arrest, but to her surprise Toro remained unexpectedly determined. In fact, her hours had increased and so had her clearance. That was fine with her, but for the moment she didn't need the additional access. Pushing her way into the tech-wired hub she had a plan for the twelve-hour day which was simply to stick with combing hotel and motel records, with the occasional phone call when something popped up that could be construed as a "lead." She knew the key was to stay mediocre.

She was the third to arrive. Two agents preceded her and they were already hard at work. Waynesboro gave a brief terse smile Toro's way as she shrugged off her suit jacket and settled into her seat. She felt uncomfortable enough having voiced the concern that that tipped the first domino in Pam's downfall. She didn't feel guilty for reporting the lack of an incoming phone call originating from Missouri to Landy's personal or official phones- that was a necessary move and she knew she did it in as clueless and innocent a way as possible. She would have simply preferred to remain entirely off of Toro's radar. She would have preferred to remain completely overlooked but now she knew he expected something above average from her. Reporting for duty and slipping out at the end of the day wouldn't quite be enough. The only thing that settled the flutter in her stomach was the steady knowledge that soon this would all be over and she could go.

A flutter of paranoia wavered through the pit of her stomach as she toyed with the cell phone in her pocket. Any moment she expected Martin to burst in through the door to retrieve it. It was his, after all. She had lifted it from his jacket pocket during her early morning goodbye ritual while he was still groggy from sleep. Guilt played with her conscience over that issue as well, but not just the guilt of getting caught. She hated to betray him even in a tiny way such as that. He had been her boyfriend for over three years. He'd helped her get her job. He wasn't just her lover. He was also her coworker and the truth was if he were so inclined he could burn her just as badly as they had burned Landy. Her life could be worse than ruined. However, she needed to do some potential damage control that Martin was unwilling to do. He was too stubborn to admit he had perhaps made a simple handling mistake. It could be easily remedied. It could, in fact, be fixed before Martin even knew she had snuck backstage to pull any strings. The problem was that he just wasn't sure she had the guts to initiate the phone call. As she typed in her ID and password to get to work, she mentally urged the cell phone to ring. Logically, she was well aware it would do very little good, but if the phone rang on its own she wouldn't have to make a decision at all.

While she started the first leg of a very long day of pointless grunt work, a grim and sobering thought struck her. Radio silence had lasted an awfully long time. She suddenly had a new reason to hope Martin's phone would ring. She had no idea how she would deal with losing an operative in the field, not when it could all have been prevented. No matter what Martin said, a mistake had been made.

* * *

Pamela Landy had been subjected to a number of formal indignities but by far the worst of all had been the wardrobe change and subsequent isolation. She sat alone on a hard backless metal chair, handcuffed and clad in a glaring orange prison jumpsuit. The handcuffs and jumpsuit were entirely unnecessary, as was the prolonged seclusion. She had been fully compliant, issuing statements to all who had asked, but obviously the words she had to say were not the words they wished to hear. Morosely, Landy knew this was perhaps only the beginning. At least the silence had given her a good amount of time to attempt to organize some type of plan. Depressingly enough her plan consisted of a single demand and in order for that demand to be made someone would eventually have to enter the room.

The eventuality did, indeed, occur, but it wasn't until seven hours in. Pamela's stomach growled angrily and she yearned for a cup of coffee or even something as basic as a donut or a pack of crackers. She was beginning to lament the fact that she'd never gotten to scarf down her fast food lunch of steamed Chinese vegetables when the click of the interrogation room lock turned and wrangled her from her internal looping monologue. The sound was jarring like a splash of freezing water on her brain. It cleared away the encroaching mental cobwebs. Landy had enough time- just a fraction of a second- to erase the surprise from her face before two armed guards accompanied a stone-faced agent into the room. A glance at his badge informed her that his ranking was lower than hers had been, though higher than hers was now. Now she was just a suspect, but she was a suspect with more experience and more wit than he possessed which gave her a wonderful advantage rank could never give.

"Pam, I'm Agent Timothy Andrews with-"

"Pam?" Landy blinked, her head tipping off to one side, her posture straightening. In an instant she managed to convey a picture of pure dignity even clad in neon orange. "We're not friends, Agent Andrews. If we were playing tennis or watching a movie, maybe you could call me Pam. If we were comparing vacation plans, maybe I'd be 'Pam' to you. I'd even allow you to call me Pam if you were even planning on listening to a word I say, but you should know from that important-looking file you were handed on your way into this important-looking meeting that I don't play games so I'm not going to pretend as though you're going to listen to me." She felt the words coming out of her mouth before she really heard them. There was nearly a second's delay before she really thought about them. She had learned a very valuable lesson from Blackbriar: most of the time it was best to think through every move, but sometimes she had to simply shoot from the hip.

"Of course I'm going to listen to you, Pam," replied Andrews with a visible falter. He pulled out the chair across from Landy and took a seat, setting down the file he held as if it had somehow become the telltale crumbs that tattled on his exploration of the cookie jar. "Why else would I be here? I don't know about everyone else here, but I'm on your side. I just want to hear your side of the story. So if you'll just start from the top… Can you recall the first thing you did after meeting with Gregory Toro for the first time?"

With a single question, Landy learned a treasure trove of information. Toro had sent a complete amateur to interview her, which meant this was simply a stalling tactic and a move to make her feel devalued. Pam's new "buddy" Tim had made a common interrogation mistake, but it gave her a loophole to grab onto. She wasn't about to let it slide.

She let a slightly confused expression flash across her face while she relaxed back in her seat. "Of course I recall the first thing I did after meeting with Toro. I doubt my cognitive abilities are being called into question here. I wasn't intending to plead incompetent or insane. Though it does bring to mind a question for you, Andrews: do you remember the first thing _you_ did after meeting with Gregory Toro?"

The agent's hands fiddled and he hesitated the half-beat necessary for Pamela's peace of mind, but she didn't cut in. She allowed him to respond. She was confident his words would only serve to dig him into a deeper trench. "I-I… we had coffee. Decaf black house blend from Starbucks."

His eyes had shot like bullets off to the right both in the direction of the door. He had subconsciously hoped to retrieve an answer from somewhere- the hallway or the recesses of his imagination. Or perhaps he'd considered simply escaping. She knew he was going to lie before words came from his mouth but she let him speak, and then she let a very long and heavy silence fall over the room while her cool blue eyes frosted his features. He visibly became increasingly uncomfortable. She could tell he was exercising some measure of restraint and making an effort to hide his anxiety but he was entirely green and she'd had him outplayed from the beginning. It was a game he'd already lost. In a brief mental tangent, Landy was surprised no one had come in to rescue poor Andrews from discomfort. Instead she waited for him to realize his own mistake.

"…Y-you asked what I did after meeting him. Sorry. I went ho-" Landy lifted a shackled hand to cut him off, allowing a faint smile to cross her face. Her entire demeanor instantly softened as did Timothy's posture. He nearly let go of an audible sigh. His jaw hung partially open as he looked across, impervious to the jangling handcuffs.

"There's no reason to lie to me, Tim. Okay? No reason. I know it seems to you that we're in completely different situations, but we're not. I know you've never met him. I knew it before you said anything. I also know this is all being recorded, but I've said the same thing every time I've been asked. I've done nothing wrong," Landy clasped her hands together and scooted in closer to the table, leaning in toward Andrews just slightly as if confiding a secret. "Just like you said, we're on the same side. We're good guys on the hunt for the truth, whatever that truth may be, and the truth is the person who is sabotaging the Agency is still there on the inside and it's our job to stop them. I'm not asking you to pull any strings. I'm not asking you to go against your superiors. I'm not asking you to put your career or yourself in jeopardy."

Agent Andrews waited for her to keep talking. She had been on a roll and he had been completely engulfed in her speech, but abruptly she'd stopped and he was once again waiting in silence. She had given him a cue and he wasn't sure what his line was supposed to be. He sat awkwardly for a moment, grasping at straws, stammering out syllables before finally sputtering out a single question, his cheeks ruddy with fear and dizzying uncertainty. "What are you asking me to do?"

"I'm just asking you to let me make my constitutionally guaranteed telephone call."

* * *

Miles upon miles of dusty road lay behind them with endless more to go. Nicky clasped a detailed roadmap of North Africa in her lap, the edges dirty and crumpled from sweaty palms. Her eyes were fixed on the windshield and the scenery in front of the car. She couldn't bear to turn her head to peer at the robot beside herself. Since taking to the road, Jason hadn't said anything except to ask about the map. For an hour she had attempted to quiz him on the balcony incident, but she had only been met with intense resistance, the sort of which she had never quite encountered before. The silence wasn't the problem. She had spent days being silent with him. It was the tension that was driving her very slowly mad. Bending down to grab her bottle of water from between her feet, Nicky cleared her throat. She knew Jason was aware she was about to speak. His hands tightened on the steering wheel, his knuckles a ghostly white.

"Is your neck feeling okay? I have aspirin," Parsons' fingers nervously played with the cap to her water bottle, but she was deeply proud of herself for starting off with an original question. She hadn't asked that one yet, and she had definitely asked more than her share.

"Yes, my neck is okay," Bourne answered, his jaw clenching with the full knowledge that was only the first of many questions. To his merit, he kept the car at a steady speed. In fact, it was his focus to keep his mind off of the inexplicable nagging burn at the pit of his stomach. He had kept the needle point of the speedometer at the same precise point for well over sixty minutes and his place in the lane hadn't wavered. It took some doing, but he had managed to convince himself those two items were of more immediate importance than figuring out just what was bothering him in a distinctly emotional way. Intuition told him if he touched it, it would act like a lit stove. Some memory would come searing to the surface, something painful and hot. He couldn't afford that while on the run.

"Are you going to talk to me now?" she asked, gaze finding a new focal point on her hands.

"I am talking to you now," his answer came, quick and clipped.

"I mean, are you going to talk about what happened back there? You seem like you need to talk. There's something on your mind. I can tell."

"You seem like _you_ need to talk. You're the one talking. If you need to talk, then talk. I don't need to talk or I would be treating this car like a therapist's couch. I kill people, Nicky. That's my job. I killed someone. It wasn't the first time, and it probably won't be the last so there's nothing to talk about," it felt to Jason like an intense uphill battle to keep the increasing frustration from creeping into his tone but he kept it low and steady. Nicky could tell it was that dangerous brand of calm, but she also knew there was something else under the surface she'd never heard before. It wasn't as though she'd never seen him kill before. It wasn't even as though she'd never seen him regret it. This was edging close to active suppression and his spoken self image was alarming whether it was a ploy to throw her off or not.

"No, that's not your job! That _was_ your job, but it's not anymore. Maybe you _should_ treat this like a therapist's couch. Maybe it would do you a little bit of good!"

"Exactly what good would it do? Should I phone up CI and tell them I'm awfully sorry for this whole misunderstanding? Can we hug it out? No. We can't. This bullshit will not end. There's always going to be another face coming after us. There's always going to be another anonymous death- whether it's mine or yours… or some kid's," Bourne almost visibly cringed. He knew he had just given Nicky enough to ammunition for her to fire off another round of brain-piercing questions and he started to breathe deeply in a preemptive effort to keep his temper under control. Focusing just on the vehicle wasn't going to be enough. He started to mentally recite the presidents in chronological order- first to last and then last to first.

"Listen, I know you're upset that she was young, but she was trying to kill you. She was going to kill me too. You were just protecting yourself and you were protecting me, and that's natural. That's natural and it's legal and it's completely their fault. If they keep sending people after you, they're to blame for whoever dies. Not you," Nicky shook her head once, tucking her hair behind her ears. "And you need to stop worrying about me. I'm not as helpless as I seem. I… I don't have the training you have, sure, but I can at least disappear. I know how to disappear and I know how to run. And I can shoot a gun, but…" she stopped when she caught a glimpse of Bourne's expression out of the side of her vision. She turned to look at him straight on but he had managed to neutralize whatever she had seen in that instant. He said nothing and she said nothing. Tension hung thick in the air for a long moment, a moment that seemed to last eternity, before two puzzle pieces seemed to fall together in place in Parsons' mind. Her lips parted in her soundless gasp, a brow lofted quizzically.

"Did you _know_ her?"

"No," Jason answered before she even had a chance to fully form the question. He knew what was coming and wanted to stop the words from being spoken. He couldn't have known her. She was too young. She was practically a child. But now that Nicky had opened her mouth and put a voice to the mental simmer that had irritated him to the point of a hair-trigger temper he was forced to acknowledge it. He felt the simmer boiling over and fought to control it, putting birthdates and places to the presidents' names.

"Are you sure you didn't know her? Did she make you remember something? Jason, if she made you remember something, it's really important. Maybe not just for you, but for us. Think, okay?"

"Just stop, Nicky…" Bourne's voice was low, shaky. Parsons knew he was holding back. She knew there was something just at the edge, something he was trying to keep away. She didn't understand why after living for years and years without a past he would choose to block out memories, but she did understand their situation was the worst time to choose not to remember.

"Christ, Jason! This isn't just you. Take a deep breath. Remember when you were up on the roof. You looked at her face- you stopped for a second. What were you thinking? When you were staring down, what were you thinking?"

Bourne was aware Nicky was still talking. A twinge of pain echoed through his skull and for a moment he was hurled through space and time. He existed in Paris, Marie's mute words and smiling face asking him a wordless question, her hair blowing sweetly in the wind. He existed in the eternal fall from the balcony to the ground, watching the teenager plunge over and over, their eyes locked in silent familiarity. Everything happened at once. His brain looped a dozen images at the same time until they all exploded into a single fiery scene. He lunged, restrained by the cruel hands of uniformed officers, while his house burned in front of him, the heat of the flames licking at his face. Detritus fell from the dusky sky, remnants of his past, pieces of a life lost forever in a raging inferno. In his razor sharp memory's vision, a glance down to his feet sent a slice through his heart. A shout erupted from his core as hungry fire gobbled up the last of a photo, a trio of smiling faces- himself, a jolly pink baby, and the young happy grin of what could almost be the dead assassin's doppelganger, aged a couple of years and stripped of the dye and death of the trade.

"…Jason? Jason, what are you doing? Shit, JASON! Watch the ROAD!" Nicky shrieked as they started to veer off to the side.

"Shut up!" Jason Bourne's mind boiled over and spilled. He yanked the wheel and the car went spinning. As his foot stomped down on the brake pedal, he shed his seatbelt and threw the car into park. He lifted up and flipped out of his seat, straddling Nicky's legs with his forearm pressed against her throat. Her words ended abruptly with a squeak. She was breathing hard, but not nearly as hard as he was. He held fast to the back of the seat for leverage. He could easily pull and push, simply crush her trachea and be done with it. He knew it and she knew it so once again a silence came crashing down between them like a leaden hammer. They sat in a deadly stalemate for minutes as their pulses slowly decreased together, gazes locked as if stuck with glue. Nicky didn't dare move; Bourne wanted to but found he couldn't.

It was Nicky, quite possibly risking death, who finally broke the impasse. She reached up to grab onto Bourne's arm, feeling the tense fibrous muscles beneath her fingers, and leaned in to try to kiss him, moving slowly so as not to spook him but deliberately enough to make her intentions clear and strong. Jason arm moved quickly from her throat, but his hand slid to cover her mouth. He blocked her mouth from his and pushed her head back against the headrest. Of course he knew what she wanted to do and he couldn't allow it. He shook his head firmly, but her plan had worked in a way she hadn't quite intended. He couldn't quite lock his gaze as harshly on hers after that, and the hostility deteriorate rapidly from there. It was only seconds before he caught himself by surprise. He had only meant to sigh, but instead there came a sob. They seemed to multiply and cripple, coming from the depths of his soul, an endless untapped well of sadness that had been waiting to overflow.

"It-it's okay…" More at a loss for what to do than she was when she was concerned about dying, Nicky did the only thing she could think of. She ignored the occasional car that swerved to avoid theirs and instantly straightened, reaching to pull him into a tight hug. The sound of heartbreak was so sudden and terrible she had to blink rapidly to keep herself from crying too.


	21. Recalcitrant Ghost

_Disclaimer: Nope, I'm still not making money! At least I'm not making money by writing this story, though considering the word count I'm starting to think at this point maybe I could actually write a book. If only I could come up with characters of my own I loved long enough…_

_Thanks, everyone! Special thanks to the reviewers and to texamich- you've kept me and this story going. _

* * *

Nicky had grown visibly weary of playing both driver and passenger shortly before they had reached Aswan and considering his violent outburst earlier in the day Jason didn't have the heart to force her to continue on beyond the point of simple weariness. They had pulled into the tourist section of Aswan and bedded up in a slightly questionable hotel. The accommodations were suitable for them, but from the room to Jason's left he could hear another young American couple complain loudly to someone about a large bug in their bathroom. It was probably best the bug was large, he reflected. Here it was really the smaller ones that packed the bigger poisons.

Their bags remained packed but overturned, laid out in a perfect row on the floor at the bottom of the bed. Parsons was the first to shower and change after Jason had quickly checked out the bathroom. He tried to do so in a manner that looked as casual as possible, which seemed to amuse her to no end. There was still an odd unmentioned tension between them since his outburst, and it was a relief to them both when Nicky disappeared into the shower, offering them a tiny glimmer of privacy. Bourne said nothing about what had triggered him and Parsons now knew better than to ask. She hadn't dared ask another question the rest of the day, instead steering the conversation into forcefully light subjects such as football and abstract art. They had done an admirable job completely ignoring the gigantic bruised elephant in the room and while at least she fully intended to ignore it further, she hoped Jason would open his stubborn, damaged mouth and talk about what happened.

Over the sound of the feeble water pressure, Nicky could hear Jason still shuffling around in the room. He was unzipping and re-zipping the bags, searching for something or perhaps just trying to find something to do. As she rinsed the last trace of shampoo from her hair, Nicky called out. "Can you get me a towel?" She had her gaze fixed on a threadbare monogrammed towel resting on the sink, but she was more interested on whether he was earnestly looking for a lost object or if he just needed a mission to accomplish. Despite the fact she hadn't worked for the Agency in well over a year, she couldn't shake the compulsion to know the mental state of those around her at all times.

The rustling stopped abruptly and then started again, this time at a renewed and fevered pace before all noise stopped. The door to the bathroom popped open just far enough for a hand to snake inside, grab the towel, and flick it toward Nicky's head. "Right in front of your face," Bourne muttered as he shut the door again, leaving Parsons with a mixed answer and an immediate need to fumble with a swatch of fabric lest she drop it into the puddle of water at her feet.

* * *

Senka was lost in a sea of chatter she, at first, didn't understand. Now it was simply overwhelming noise she had to tune out in order to keep the last dregs of her sanity. Her lungs burned as did her legs as she pushed through the dense afternoon Cairo crowd, plowing into bodies, bile surging into the back of her throat in a purely physical gut reaction to the pain collision caused. A side-effect from detaching mind from body in order to push past the unbearable pain of a broken body was, she was discovering, the obvious: she was finding it hard to think, hard to concentrate, hard to focus on anything in front of her as real so as she ran full force into a small hunched lady peddling fresh produce on the sidewalk she was very nearly shocked to find herself spinning from the momentum.

A glance back over her shoulder told her she had lost her police trail a block behind and somewhere from the recesses of her mind surfaced the common knowledge that since she had distance she now must fade into the scenery. She slowed instantly from a sprint to a leisurely walk, and though her lungs screamed for more oxygen she slowed her breathing as well. Her ribs sent piercing pain through her chest with every deep breath she took, but she had to breathe deeply to make them count. The fingers of one hand hooked invisibly around a brooch as her arm swung gently in its natural arc and she palmed the jewelry, thumbing the clasp open. She turned down one street and then another, working away from the strip of retail and toward a small cluster of apartments. She stopped at the nearest window and peeked in, seeing the lights off. After pressing her ear against the door and hearing no sound, she tried the knob. It was locked but a quick jiggle of the brooch's needle in the tumbler was enough to manipulate the lock open and she slipped inside.

It took nearly five minutes for her to be certain the apartment was empty, but once she was sure she was very sure. The food in the fridge was rotting and fetid and an entire family of rodents was living out of the bathroom. She wouldn't be bothered any time soon. She stopped and lowered herself carefully onto a wooden kitchen stool and silently began working on removing the second half of the handcuffs around her wrist. She had taken a mental inventory of her injuries while she lie cuffed to the bed in the hospital, but that was as much as she had dwelled on just what hurt. One wrist was hastily casted in off-white plaster and the whole back left side of her ribs felt tragically abused. The small of her back tensed in spasm any time she stayed still for more then a couple of minutes and the back of her head was stitched together in a fashion that would make only Humpty Dumpty proud. It also beat out an awful cadence that threatened the contents of her stomach with every throb and gave moving objects an odd halo shine. She knew for a fact sleeping was out of the question, but that went without saying. She was certain that at least if the gunshot wound she had received from Paz had gotten infected it wasn't her biggest worry anymore.

She had lost her phone and she had failed her mission. She couldn't even explain why she had failed it. She had simply hesitated and that was unacceptable. She was desperate to catch up and anxiety lapped at her heels as she sat and allowed minutes to pass without action. She stood and winced as her lower back tensed in protest. She had no choice but to freeze for a moment until her muscles were free to move again. After raiding the abandoned bedroom for a dusty change of clothes, she vomited violently into the sink as a cluster of skinny rats stared at her indifferently. Then she again took to the streets in search of a phone.

* * *

Dread had crept up on Waynesboro in insidious waves. Before she even knew it was there it had settled over her mind like a damp, wet blanket, stifling all other rational thought. The mission had failed and their agent was down. She was sure of it, and it was all because of Martin's rash and overconfident thinking. He had assumed it would simply be a sprint; he hadn't planned on the possibility of a marathon, and now they were completely screwed. She taking her lunch break at an outdoor café, waiting for Rike to meet her and rehearsing her speech. While she wanted to rip out his eyes and play pool with them, she knew she had to be significantly more diplomatic. After all, once this was all over and done with she'd go home to sleep in the same bed with him and a sightless boyfriend would be- to put it lightly- complicated. She knew herself well enough to know she wasn't so much angry with him to begin with. She was simply worried and frustrated and more than a little concerned they would spend the rest of their prime years in prison.

Martin's timing couldn't have been more impeccable. He descended on her table with a faint business smile and seated himself just as Kelly's pocket began to chirp. Recognizing the ring tone immediately, Rike's hands went to his own jacket and felt around but he froze as a guilt blush flooded Kelly's face. "I don't want to know why you have it. Just give it to me." He held his hand out expectantly while Waynesboro's mouth worked soundlessly. She reached into her own suit and pulled out the phone but, rather than passing it over, she fought back a surge of shame and flipped it open to her own ear.

"Senka. Code in, please."

A pause came as Martin's jaw clenched and he sat back in his seat, his gaze flicking around to their surroundings in an obvious check to see just how big of a scene he could make without drawing too much attention to them. "We've met before, Senka. My name is Alice. Two-four-four, alpha tango five. We've never spoken on the phone, but this is important. Code in." As Martin started to come across the table, Kelly held out a finger, a brow raised ominously as she pointed to the phone. She shrugged as though helpless, mouthing the words "She can hear you" to the seething man.

"Great, thanks. I'm glad you called. We were starting to get worried for a while. How'd it go?" Kelly watched Martin purposefully put on a neutral expression as he exchanged a couple of words too, whispering "What the fuck?" to her.

"Oh," with a cringe, Waynesboro instantly set Rike on edge. He was forward again, making another grab for the phone. This time she barely had enough time to lean backward and avoid his grasping hand to keep the device away from him. The slap of her hand batting his away was the only noise generated by the exchange. "…You're alive, though. That matters. So…" Kelly paused, staring at the point between Martin's eyebrows where the wrinkles really started. "You're going to need a new location for the two. We can get that for you. They're probably still too shaky on air transport so they didn't go east. Um…" Kelly glanced at Martin who gave an inaudible sigh and peeked at his watch. He held up three fingers and she nodded with an apologetic smile. "Give us three hours then call back. Stay where you are for now and rest."

After hanging up the phone, Kelly stood to abandon the rest of her lunch and Martin stood to abandon the prospect of lunch. There were now officially more important things to do than eat. "You don't know how to handle agents," Rike muttered as they went to part.

Waynesboro let out a quiet laugh and slipped his phone back into his jacket pocket, shaking her head. "You don't know how to handle people."

* * *

"I knew her."

The words, the first real sentence of substance of the night, cut through the air like a knife. They lingered over them and the bed, over their makeshift dinner of Nubian take-out and vending machine desserts before finally the weight of the words forced Nicky to speak in response. She could, of course, change the subject or act as though she didn't know which "her" he was referring to, but those would both be forms of lies and considering the glassine fragility of the subject itself she knew instantly choosing to play aloof would send them both down another bad path. Choosing to directly confront the issue, however, didn't mean she had to look at him while doing it.

"How?" She started to pick at a stale, dark cupcake, stuffing broken-off bits into her mouth pensively while peering at the wrapper as if expecting it to answer.

"I don't know," he shook his head, digging his plastic fork into the Styrofoam container. It gave an angry squeak in response and he instantly stopped as if alarmed or offended.

Nicky's pause between his answer and her next question was longer than necessary, but she was frantically trying to figure out his mindset and predict his reaction to what she might say. She was painfully aware the wrong comment might permanently place this subject out of reach forever, and she knew more than anything he needed to talk about it. Finally, she mentally steeled her nerves and looked up at his face. "No. You know. What did you see?"

Bourne's cheek twitched and for a moment Parsons was prepared to be punched, but instead he glanced up at her and stared. She met his gaze with unwavering false courage for nearly a minute until he faltered first and closed up his box of food, shifting around in discomfort. "Okay. I saw a burning house and cops. And I saw a picture. It was like a family photo. It probably was a family photo. I was in it, and I thought it was her, but the more I think about it the more I realize it wasn't. It looked like her but it wasn't… The end." He let out a breath he had been holding in and then pressed his hands against his thighs, blinking rapidly.

"Uhhh," Nicky droned for a moment. "Uh, no. Not the end. That's not the end. Hold on! Was that a memory or was that something you associated with a memory? Do you think your brain just shoved her face into a memory you already had? Has that happened before?"

"No, that's never happened before but I've never killed a fucking kid before either!" Bourne launched himself off of the bed and was suddenly pacing like a caged tiger. Nicky briefly considered going quiet, but he was moving and he was angry. She should be more concerned once he stopped showing emotion.

"_Your_ kid?" she pressed, shrinking down on the bed to make herself all the more unthreatening. Bourne's nostrils flared and the whites of his eyes flashed for an instant as his head snapped to stare a hole through Nicky. If it weren't for the sparkle of tears to soften his eyes, she would have wished she could crawl underneath the bed.

"_What_? I didn't say anything about that part! Where the fuck did you get that from?"

"No! I didn't mean it like that. I just meant that you probably came from similar backgrounds and she was used like you. You helped father the program that bred the person she is now is all, you know? You were the first. You're now getting to a point in your life where you just want balance and predictability where she probably wanted adventure and-and honor. She probably got fed the same bullshit you did and… it was a stupid analogy," Nicky floundered before she stopped, her head tilting to one side. "Wait, you didn't say anything about what part?"

"Nothing… the kindred spirits in adventure and killing people part," Bourne muttered, his expression melting away to stone cold neutrality as he gathered up the trash and dumped it piece by piece into a garbage bag.

Caution tweaked out its warning in the back of Nicky's skull. The emotion had been pushed onto a back burner now. She knew that while he still behaved like a caged animal he was no real danger to her, but now that he was fighting back feelings he was indeed a cornered wildcat. She had to be careful whether or not to press on, but curiosity was both her strength and weakness. "You actually meant a flesh-and-blood child, which is why you thought that's what I meant. That's not what I meant. I meant it figuratively… Jason, was there a kid in that picture?"

"No," Bourne had run out of disposable things to throw away so he grabbed the cupcake straight from Nicky's hand and chucked it into the bag. That only took care of his idle hands for two seconds. He needed to get out.

Nicky didn't buy into his half-hearted lie. "How old? This could be really important, Jason!"

"I said no." Parsons stopped mid-motion and watched as Jason yanked the door open. "I'll be in the hallway." She didn't follow as the door closed behind him with the quietest of clicks. She heard the same tone she'd ignored in the car and she wasn't going to make that same mistake twice. She pushed herself up to sit in the middle of the empty bed and turned her gaze to stare at her bag. Inside was her laptop and beyond that was a world of information. Perhaps hidden within that world was some tiny paragraph she might be able to use to ease his mind. She wanted to tell him it was just stress playing cruel tricks with his memory. For once she wanted to tell him he was crazy. After staring at the unresponsive door for as long as she could stand, she peeled herself up and grabbed her laptop, plugging it in and booting it up.

* * *

Landy wasn't used to walking in chains, but it wasn't the fact that she was walking in chains that irritated her most. It was the fact that the chains were entirely unnecessary. She had been an ideal prisoner, smiling and congenial to everyone. She'd made an effort to be extra kind to those that were the worst to her, not because she believed in some golden rule but because she was acutely aware that every move she made was being watched and recorded for posterity. Every move she made was also being made a hundred times more difficult by bureaucratic hand-wringing and ego-slinging. It had taken an agonizing six hours to finally make that phone call and it was another ten hours until a meeting to approve her meeting could be approved. A day and a half later she was led down long prison hallways, her shoes reflecting on the pristine federal floors while the suited agents surrounding her at all sides were made brave by her handcuffs. "Hey, Pam Landy? You think the women's place is this nice?"

"I'll bet it's a lot cleaner," jeered an agent from her right rear. She could hear him toying nervously with his ID badge as if someone might take it away from him and leave him to be mistaken for a prisoner.

"I'll bet it's a lot quieter," Landy said without pause. The two agents to her left gave adolescent moans of delight in response to her quip, while the last agent to talk suddenly became very stoic and professional.

They were forced to pause at security gate after security gate before finally coming to a stop in front of a narrow-windowed visiting room. The lights within were impossibly brighter than the lights in the hallway and a small surge of nerves tweaked at the pit of Pamela's stomach. She toyed with the reason at the bottom of the anxiety, coming up with a simple lack of knowledge. She didn't know who she was up against. A tiny blurb in public newspapers and a cleaned up Agency file was nothing to base judgment on. He, however, could have had access to her personal files for months prior to his capture. If she were to be perfectly honest with herself, the way his mind worked unsettled her. She was a brilliant strategist and she was unerringly confident in her abilities to outthink nearly any opponent, but to prefer to brainwash and kill rather than maneuver and capture was beyond her. She had seen the results of his life's work firsthand and the effect was devastating.

As the door was opened and her eyes adjusted to the flood of light, her mind stalled and she went into autopilot in order to step into the room without too much of a visible hesitation. What she saw wasn't anything like she'd expected and in a very childlike way she wished she'd been warned. Propped up in his chair like an abused rag doll was the waxy shrunken figure of Albert Hirsch, his cheeks pasty hollows, his collar dampened with sweat. Upon seeing her, he reached a shaking hand to his face and peeled the plastic oxygen mask from his mouth, revealing teeth that looked to Landy two shades more yellow against his ashen skin. He was grinning and Pam's heart dropped as she slipped into a chair. She could only hope she hadn't lost the game before it had a chance to start.


End file.
